The Warlord's Domain Read online

  "It seems to me," said Giorl severely once Voord's confession had run its course, "that you're lucky to be even this much alive."

  "I don't know what you mean." Exhausted from the pain of injury, the pain of surgery and the soul-wrenching effort of telling everything about his present situation to the one person in the Empire he least wanted to know about it, Woydach Voord was content merely to lie still on the thin, hard mattress of sponge-clean leather and be glad he wasn't hurting more than usual.

  "I mean that instead of just these mortal wounds which neither heal nor kill you, what about being trapped in a body which had truly died and was decomposing all around your still-living awareness of it? At least you have the good fortune to be reasonably intact." Giorl polished one of her surgical probes on a piece of soft cloth and studied it incuriously. "But from all I've heard, the high stakes in sorcery demand a high price.

  I'll stick to more natural skills, thanks very much. Now, about these cuts and all the other mess… you say that closing the wounds eases the pain?"

  "Yes, damn you, I've said so already!" Voord would have shouted at her had the strain of producing anything above a whisper not begun to squeeze his entrails out of the holes in either flank. He collapsed back again, panting and bathed in sweat. "Yes. Close them… please."

  "Sutures won't work, the dermal layer outlasts them; we know that much already…" Giorl was talking more to herself than Voord, the words mostly medical terms, no more than audible thought and not making much sense to a layman even in his full senses, never mind one who was delirious and almost insane with agony. "Yes, yes," she said after a while, emerging from her muttered reverie, "we could try that, it would at least create no further harm…"

  "What are you talking about, woman?" Voord stared straight up at the ceiling and tried to control his temper and impatience, because losing one or both did nothing except cause him more pain.

  "Silver wire. I could use it to close the cuts and repair the remains of the other damage. It wouldn't rot, and it wouldn't react against your body tissue."

  "Silver wire." He repeated the words as if tasting them. "Have you done this before?"

  "No." The blunt frankness of Giorl's reply was supported by what else she had to say. "And I haven't tried to heal a man who ought to be three weeks dead, either—just before you ask."

  The sound Voord made was like a cat being sick. Only Giorl, more familiar than anyone else in the city with the sounds humans could make under great stress, could have identified it as a laugh. "Do I win the match?" she asked.

  "Only half the points," said Voord. "You're forgetting who I am." He grinned at her, a horrid expression like that on the face of a five-day corpse. "The Grand Warlord deserves gold wire at least."

  Giorl stared at him, then laughed softly at the determined, ironic attempt at humor. Suffering seemed to be doing something to improve the Voord she knew, changing him inside, maybe even making him into a better person more able to appreciate the difficulties of others. Or maybe not. But it would be an interesting development to watch. "Of course, my lord," she said, still laughing just a little. "Gold wire indeed, my lord. And would my lord also care for little jewels where the ends of wire are twisted together… ? Of course," Giorl continued after a moment, "I can't use pure gold wire. Too soft. Where would I find silver-gilt?"

  "Send one of my body-servants to the fortress armory. They should have what you want."

  "What I want, Woydach, is to go home. There are other things that need doing."

  "Afterward. I come first."

  Giorl kept the obvious comment to herself and spoke to a summoned servant instead. Once the man had gone about her business, she returned her attentions to Voord and to the confidences he had imparted to her. She had never met a sorcerer before, and apart from curiosity had never really wanted to. Giorl disapproved of users of the Art Magic—not in the same way as the Imperial Courts of Law might do, but simply because in her experience there was already trouble enough in the world without bringing in more from Outside Voord's present situation was a case in point. The thought of living this horrific half-life was enough to make even her skin creep, and the one way to hope for escape was a route along which she would guide him only with the greatest reluctance.

  "Have you considered," she said at last, "trying to shake free of this curse by the… ah… same means as it was laid on you? Have you attempted to reverse the spell?"

  "Yes, and no."

  "Mother and Maiden, man, why not?"

  Voord's teeth showed as his lips twitched back in an expression somewhere between rueful smile and snarl of impatience. "Because," he said, "no matter what it says in children's stories, sorcery is rather more than just the waving of a wand. To grant power, it needs power. And the sorcery I need takes more than most. I couldn't do it and survive the strain, not like this, except that… that now, 'not surviving' might mean something worse than death. I'm afraid to die and find I'm still alive…"

  "There should be enough here to keep us comfortable," said Aldric, hefting a money-purse in the palm of his hand.

  "After the trouble they put you through, I should think so." Kyrin was still feeling somewhat ruffled by what had been so lightly introduced as "customary procedures," the way Guild Freyjan had checked and investigated everything to do with Aldric before parting with anything more substantial than good manners, and that he himself had been completely unconcerned did only a little to calm her down.

  The cipher code was only the first step. After that, and with the big guard in close attendance, had come comparisons with what was presumably a description prepared and circulated by the Guild House in Alba; comparisons that were ticked off a list like a housewife shopping in the market. Height, weight (there were slight problems with that one), eye color, visible scars, seals and similar means of identification and finally, comparison through lenses of thumbprints made on glass.

  When first setting up this financial arrangement back in Alba, Aldric had provided two-score and some-odd prints of each thumb on small strips of glass, one for each of the Houses set up by Guild Freyjan to manage ' their affairs. These had been sent out together with a copy of the identification chart and would be utilized, they had told him, to make certain that the person attempting to make use of Talvalin money was the person entitled to it. He had provided a fresh thumbprint today, on another strip of glass, and they had both watched while one of the Guild's experts in such matters had compared the prints, first side by side and then with the new overlaying the old, looking for points of similarity or difference. Only when that had been completed was Kyrin able to detect real warmth in any Guildsman's smile. And more important still, the guard had been dismissed.

  Apart from finally getting to use his own money, Aldric also gained some advice—free, for a wonder; there were few enough things in a Guild House that didn't have some sort of price tag—concerning lodging-taverns in the city. From the shape of him, the Guildsman who provided the information was most likely recommending not only which tavern had the best rooms for the best price, but the best food for any price. That was all right; neither Kyrin nor Aldric had ever known each other to be averse to a good meal…

  "It's getting late, m'love. Let's get to where we're going."

  "Good." Kyrin hunched down into the deep fur lining her hood and watched as a single snowflake dropped like a feather from the evening sky. "He made it sound a good place to stay, at least."

  "And eat. I'd say he—"

  The woman came running down the street toward them, stumbling, skidding on the snow that traffic had packed down between the cobblestones and screaming, always screaming. Her words were Drusalan, more or less—maybe a local dialect or something of the sort— but whatever the reason, she was ignored. More than ignored: ostentatiously rejected. People returning home on foot the short distance from where they had been shopping in the mercantile quarter of Drakkesborg, merchant families of quality who had town houses hereabouts, actually turned their backs
to her, pretending that neither she nor her frantic shrieks existed.

  Not understanding anything but the poor woman's distress, Aldric shot a glance at Kyrin; it was returned augmented by a shrug that said plainly your choice. Kyrin suspected that she knew only too well why this woman was being treated as an outcast, and if Aldric didn't know now was hardly the time to educate him. That need for a decision, and reasons to help make it, were perhaps what prompted the Alban to knee Lyard sideways, blocking the street. No matter how crazed she might be, the woman was at least sane enough not to attempt barging past a packpony linked by leading-reins to sixteen hands and a good many pounds'-weight of coal-black warhorse.

  "What's the matter?" Aldric asked it courteously; more courteously than he needed, for by her dress the woman was a servant and thus several classes further down the rigid Drusalan social scale than even foreigners. What he got in reply was a slipshod babble of words which, after the first sentence had helped his brain lock into some sort of understanding, were not blurred so much by dialect as by a mind skidding along the edge of desperation-born hysterics.

  "Hnach-at, keü'ach da?" This time when he repeated the question it slashed out like a whipcut, in the clipped high-to-low mode that any armed and mounted man could use to a woman on foot, except when that woman was without doubt Princess Marya Marevna, sister of the Emperor… or Tehal Kyrin with a sword across her back.

  It acted as he had hoped, like the slap across the face of any hysteric, to restore at least a degree of coherence. "Muh-muh-muh," was all the woman managed at first, but that was more a result of her frantic run along the street than anything else.

  She clutched at his stirrup-iron, face red and sweaty despite the evening chill, and gasped breath into her outraged lungs. Finally, as calm as anyone might be after such exertion, she looked up into his face and said in better Court Drusalan than he expected to hear, "My lady's little daughter lies dying, lord. I… I ask humbly, of your courtesy—help me." Her grip on stirrup and booted ankle tightened as her control slipped a little, and all the forced courtliness of her language dissolved in the anguish of one word. "Please … ?"

  "Oh, God… Kyrin? You know more than I do about these things."

  "No promises." She spoke softly, and in Alban. "But go with her. I'll—I'll see what can be done." And, she looked the thought at him but kept its sound to herself, what you can do, my dear …

  Giorl, equipped with pincers and long-nosed pliers instead of her more usual surgical equipment, and feeling more like an armorer than a physician, had almost finished her task when the knock came at the door. Without being told, one of the servants—who took care to remain well out of earshot when the Woydach had company—moved from his at-ease position to the great steel bar that ensured privacy, and only then paused to await instruction.

  "Tell him to open it," said Voord. He spoke with difficulty through teeth clenched tight shut, because neither the mild soporifics nor a large quantity of distilled alcohol had done anything to alleviate the pain of Giorl's metal-work until she completed her operations on any given injury. Even after she was done, all he had to be thankful for was that the wounds once closed faded to a dull discomfort rather than the white-hot pain when they gaped open; and now only the sword-stabs in his flanks remained to be sewn shut.

  "The Warlord commands: let the door be opened." Giorl spoke the few high-mode words over her shoulder without either turning around or slackening the grip of her fingers and thumb on the layers of skin, muscle and subcutaneous fat through which she was threading an alcohol-doused gilt wire. Any loss of concentration and it would be all to do again, something for which Voord wouldn't thank her. It was strange work, more mechanical repair than healing, and despite the pain it was plainly causing Voord it was like neither of the two skills which made her so important in the city of Drakkesborg.

  Three men came in. They had evidently come directly from outside the building, for newly fallen snow was still piled deep on the hoods and shoulders of their Army overrobes, while inside the military mantles—Giorl paused in her work to stare until a whimpering groan from Voord reminded her of the task at hand—they wore the all-concealing garb of tulathin.

  Only when the biggest of the trio put back his face-concealing mask did she feel a little more at ease. He at least was a man familiar enough to any who had known Voord Ebanesj in the past few years: the man called Tagen, who was Voord's closest friend, confidante, bodyguard and some said lover. Certainly his presence indicated that the other two were friendly—so far as anyone could claim that a taulath was friendly.

  "Tagen, I told you to take five men," said Voord, and for all the weakness in his voice he overlaid the trembling fraility with menace. "I see you and two others. What happened?"

  For all that she couldn't see them, Giorl was conscious of the various servants in the room taking as hasty a leave as good manners would permit. Certainly Tagen said nothing until the sound of the great door closing made it plain that he and his people were alone again. She, of course, remained—not only because the work she was performing on Voord's tattered body was not something he would allow her to leave unfinished no matter what the circumstances, but Voord and Tagen were both well aware that Giorl Derawn had already heard so many secrets that one more wouldn't make a deal of difference.

  "What happened, sir, was that he wasn't alone."

  "The woman?" Voord sat up with a jerk, then lay back gasping as Giorl glared at him and continued to stitch. "I told you about the woman; I warned you before you left Drakkesborg that he wasn't traveling alone, so what went wrong?"

  "When we found him, he was being attacked already. You wanted him alive, so we killed as many of the others as we could, but by the time we were finished he had gone. There was snow falling, tracking was a waste of time, so instead of trying to follow we cleaned up our own mess, took the bodies out of sight into the forest for the wolves to deal with and left the steading where we found him as the owner would have wanted to find it. That's what happened, sir. We lost three; the others were very good."

  "The others… Tagen, what were they? Mercenaries or hired bodyguards who had turned on their employer, or just plain bandits that you interrupted?"

  "They were tulathin. Just like us."

  Voord swallowed this piece of information with as much reluctance as if it was a mouthful of rotten meat, staring at the ceiling and no longer reacting to Giorl's attentions, in a manner that she found unsettling. What she was doing—the same thing that she had been doing this hour or more—was hurting no less; he simply wasn't noticing it anymore. "And what about the target? You said he got away. Surely you went after him when you finished covering your tracks—or had he covered his own too well for that?"

  "Sir, I said already—he didn't cover his tracks, the snowstorm did. Even if we had gone straight after him we would have lost him just as quickly as—"

  "As you did by doing nothing whatsoever!"

  "Certainly he's still alive, sir."

  "Oh. And what makes you so sure of that? Knowing it's what I want to hear, maybe?"

  "The tulathin say so, sir."

  "Ah. Wonderful. I'm utterly convinced." Voord jerked and made a whining sound down his nose as Giorl sealed the last-but-one-loop of wire with a quick rotary twist of the pliers. Patient stared at surgeon, surgeon gazed at patient, and no emotion was transmitted either way.

  "Almost done," said Giorl. "I could leave the last until you've finished talking…"

  "No, not when I'm just getting used to the notion of constant pain. Get on with it, and get it over with. I might be needing you for other matters."

  "Woydach'ann, you told me that when I was finished here I could go home. My daughter is sick. She needs me. She—"

  "Can wait. Enough. Finish. Now, Tagen, tell me how this remarkable mess could have happened when I trusted all the planning to yourself and the tulathin? What went wrong?"

  "They, and the three who died, have worked for you and for Kagh' Ernvakh this
year or more. But they remain what they first were, tulathin. A clannish lot, regardless of their hired loyalties. Most importantly, they have a net of spies and informants all over Alba and the Empire." Tagen walked a little closer, seeming either deliberately or unconsciously to be distancing himself from the two tulathin.

  "What I suspect happened," he continued in the same careful monotone, "was what someone else wanted Tal—… him dead, and hired tulathin of their own. Both ours and theirs obtained their information from the same source, went to the same place and… well. An unfortunate coincidence."

  Giorl finished off all her sutures by braiding a scrap of soft leather into the wires, so that the sharpened ends would not catch on clothing or other skin. She was listening to all that was being said, but without any great attention since there was a feeling about the whole business which suggested she would soon be hearing about it over and over to the point of boredom.

  "Is that what they told you?" Voord's voice had lost most of its emotion, as if he had seen sense and regained full control of his temper. "Or was it an opinion you formed yourself?"

  "Something of both, sir." Tagen stiffened fractionally, seeing what Voord was driving at. "Though they did take great pains to tell me their view of the situation, and wasted no time about it either. Sir."

  "And was that all they told you?"

  "Yes, sir."

  Voord took a long swallow of the drug-laced spirit that waited in a cup beside his bed. A dribble of the stuff ran like purple blood from one corner of his mouth as his lips quirked in a sort of smile and Giorl, seeing it, knew that whatever suffering had done to him it had not erased the mind-set of the man with whom she was familiar.

  "And tell me, Tagen—again, in your opinion—was this all that they told you all that they knew?"

  "Yes, sir." And then that deadly pause. "I believe so, anyway."

  "So." Voord raised himself on one elbow, brows furrowing a touch as the ache of old/new injuries nagged at his nerves but came nowhere near the stabbing anguish of before. "Guards! Guards!"