![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
avevale_intelligencerYes, this is it, the last one. Our long national nightmare is over.
The MS is now in the hands of a reliable editor, who will point out to me such things as Mordecai being good at languages on one page and hopeless at them on another, and hopefully a revised and improved text will be available in print or ebook form via Lulu in due course. In the meantime, if you want an electronic ARC of the text as it stands, let me know via email and I will send you one.
And, of course, if you would like to comment on this chapter or the story as a whole, that would make me very very happy indeed.
Thanks for reading.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
“Lady Ralitz,” Gisel said.
“Lady Andemar. And your majesty. Well, this is a surprise.” Lady Ralitz smiled with perfect savoir-faire as she rose from her chair. “May I offer you some tea?”
“Not this time, I think,” Gisel said. “But thank you all the same.” Gisel stood aside as Zivano walked between them into the room. “I believe you've met.”
Lady Ralitz's face twisted into a mask of rage, and she reached for something down beside her chair. Zivano made a single gesture, and she froze.
“You viper!” she spat at Zivano. “You disgusting pig!”
“Enough of that,” Zivano said easily, gesturing again. Unwillingly, Lady Ralitz straightened up, while Gisel retrieved the small bulb of úllama from the floor. “Handle that very carefully, Gisel, and don't squeeze it whatever you do. Now then, my lady, I'm going to ask you some questions, and you're going to answer them truthfully.”
“I'll never tell you anything,” Lady Ralitz snarled.
“Oh yes, you will,” Zivano said. “Because, you see, I'm going to use magic.” He made a gesture, and Lady Ralitz's head twisted upwards and to the right.
*
“We almost missed it, my lord,” one of the troopers was saying to Varnak when Mordecai caught up. Behind him, he knew, Stychel and his boys were crowding through the harbour gates, followed by Churidang and the ap Gavrus sisters.
The net that had been blocking the upstream entrance to the harbour was now being held by two troopers at either end, with the bulk of it immersed in the water. Between the two ends could be seen, above the surface, the top of a sort of domed metal object, oval in shape and about fifteen feet across, with a round door or lid in the centre, secured by a wheel.
“It's attached to the stern of the boat by a sort of hook,” the trooper was saying. “Boat must have been pulling it along all the way. Boatmaster Flood's in a right paddy about it.”
“Under the water,” Mordecai said. Even looking at it, he had a strong sense that the thing was not there at all, but now, with his eyesight for reference, he could recognise strong Tseneshi witch-wards. I wonder where they got those, he thought. And: I thought they were against the use of magic.
“That's right, sir,” the trooper said. “We haven't opened it up yet, sir, in case as there might be traps, and, well, long and the short of it is, sir, we were wondering if you would care to go first.”
Mordecai pulled himself together. “Yes, of course, officer,” he said. “Please tell your men to keep well back. Nobody should be near this thing. That goes for you too, your royal highness.”
Varnak blinked at the use of his full title, but acquiesced, and as the troopers fell back, Mordecai advanced on the object. A plank had been stretched from the shore to the top of it, just short of the lid, and Mordecai felt a twinge of prospective vertigo, remembering the gangplank in Tamshold; but he shook it off. This was important.
He walked carefully along the plank, knelt down in front of the lid, and tried turning the wheel, first clockwise, then anticlockwise. The latter proved to be the right direction, and as the lid came loose and hinged up, a puff of stale and fetid air greeted him and nearly caused him to overbalance.
Of course. They must have had to come up for air every night, not to mention food. This is where our tray-stealing ghost came from.
Inside he could see a ladder leading down, and light. Mordecai, holding his breath, clambered awkwardly on to the ladder and descended into the depths. As he did so, he thought he heard running footsteps behind him, but put it out of his mind.
The space inside the strange craft seemed to consist of two rooms, separated by a narrow corridor, and lit by strange glowing tubes. Mordecai examined the first room quickly, and discovered a number of books and papers with writing on them in a weird pictographic language that seemed vaguely familiar from somewhere, and what appeared to be a set of controls, set under a window which currently showed the back of the Pride of Tamland. He crossed the corridor into the second room, and stopped dead.
“Tha's a bit late, chuck,” Willibald Volebreath said wearily.
Mordecai just had time to register the two dead-white, and dead, bodies on the floor, the chair, the tangled ropes, the small bulb-shaped object in Willibald's hand, when the entire craft lurched and heeled over, and he landed clumsily on top of Willibald. Almost at once water began to pour into the room in a torrent.
Mordecai strangled the scream that was trying to come out, and tried to grab Willibald and get back to the door, but the door was now on the ceiling, and Willibald was a dead weight in his arms. The lights flickered and died, and darkness and cold descended on him like a sodden blanket.
“Nay...” he heard the boy say, above the rushing waters. “I be done...tha go...”
“Not on your life,” Mordecai snarled, and tried again, but the water was already half filling the room, and he was losing his grip. With his last effort, he took hold of Willibald by the waist and held him up, his head above the water, and as it closed over his own head he could only hope that whoever had cut the net would turn a corner in hell and bump into him.
The walls were closing in.
*
In a large room, floored, walled and vaulted in stone, a double row of trestle tables had been set up. At them, men and women with cloths wrapped round their faces and strange, thin gloves on their hands worked, grinding, mixing, putting small quantities of powders and grains and liquids into sachets, bottles and jars, under the direction of two men with dead-white skin whose Tamlandish clothes sat uneasily on their skinny bodies.
They looked around, and several of the workers looked up, at the sound of a key turning in the lock of the room's only door.
“Who are you, woman?” one of the pale men said to the woman framed in the doorway.
“She's your employer,” said a voice from behind the woman, “or was. Don't move.”
Both the pale men tried to grab something at their belts, and froze as Zivano, Gisel, King Bran and a squad of palace guards followed Lady Ralitz into the room.
“Under the Temple of None,” Bran said. “Not a bad idea. Nobody would ever think to ask, because nobody ever asks what anyone else is doing here. Captain, make sure nobody touches anything on those tables, and tie those two up securely—these would be Chotani, I take it. Zivano, when our friends are safely bound, if you could dispose of all this filth...”
“Assuredly, your majesty.” Zivano spoke a word with a weird twist halfway through, and there was a poomp! of displaced air as everything on the tables suddenly vanished.
“And now,” Gisel said, as they followed the guards and their prisoners out into the open air, “can we please help Mordecai? Not only do we need him back, but if this Chaz and Zorn are as bad as their lackeys, he could be in terrible danger.”
“I will try,” Zivano said. “Remember, though, I don't have the power of the Panergodyne to draw on. I may not even be able to locate him if he's too far away.” A thought occurred to him. “Wait a moment,” he said, and took off at a surprisingly fast run towards the palace and the magery.
The two Chotani were glaring angrily at Lady Ralitz. Bran grinned.
“I know just what you're thinking,” he said. “You're thinking that the reason your plan failed is because you were taking orders from a woman all this time. You're quite wrong, you know. It was her plan, and it was a diabolically cunning one, misdirection all the way. It would have worked. Only we had magic on our side.”
One of the Chotani spat at the king's feet. “Magic is trickery and illusion,” he snarled, “and the gods a fable for children. Only the physical is real, only the physical is significant. History will prove us right, when all of you are long dead.”
“That's what she thought,” Bran said mildly. “Only the thing about magic, you see, is that it works whether you believe in it or not. Now what she was planning to do with money, that would have been trickery and illusion. It would only have worked as long as people believed in it, and once it was well bedded in, the consequences of it failing to work would have been horrible beyond words. Between that and good honest magic, I know which I prefer.”
Zivano came back, still running. Gisel and Bran looked at what he held in the crook of his arm and did not comment.
“I know where he is,” Zivano said, “and he is indeed in great danger. If you will excuse me, your majesty.”
From his belt pouch he produced a small red wooden ball.
*
Mordecai coughed and retched. His chest was on fire, there was a foul taste in his mouth, his back was cold and wet, and a great ape seemed to be trying to roll him out like pastry. He coughed up more water, flailed his arms weakly, and then Varnak's lips descended over his own and air flooded his lungs.
“You...” Mordecai coughed again, when he was released. “You need a shave.”
Varnak laughed, a little unsteadily. “Thank Tam, Mordecai,” he said. “You're all right?”
“Never mind me, you oaf,” Mordecai snapped, as recollection rushed back. “What about Willibald?”
“We got him out first,” Varnak said, unhappily, “but...well, I don't think there's much we can do for him, Mordecai.”
The last words were uttered in a sort of startled yelp as Mordecai, pushing him aside, sat up, looked around, scrambled to his feet and stumbled across the treacherously wet stone of the dock, over to where the body of his apprentice was lying, surrounded by worried-looking people.
“I'm sorry, sir,” a trooper said. “She doesn't seem to want to live.”
“He,” Mordecai corrected him savagely. “Are you blind?” He knelt down beside Willibald, who gave no sign of consciousness, though the narrow chest still rose and fell. He could see what was wrong. He could not do a thing about it. The spell that had had such a terrible effect on Driskil, even if he had the power left to cast it, would cause even more suffering to Willibald.
“No,” Mordecai said in a low growl. “No. Not like this. Not now. Not here.” A wave of pure rage and pain and loss was swelling up inside him, rage that he had come all this way with Willibald only just behind him and had never known, pain that he had never done or said all the things he had so desperately wanted to do, loss, loss, loss...
He threw back his head and screamed, and all his being, body and soul and heart, rushed up out of him in that scream. It was not a battle cry, not a warning to the lord of the dead, nothing romantic or dramatic or even in any way intended. It was simply a consequence, like thunder after lightning.
And in the silence, at the bottom of his lungs and unable to make himself breathe in, with his eyes still fixed on heaven and his whole body aching with the force of the scream, Mordecai saw a tiny red dot against the clouded heaven. It grew, and grew, and he was unable to take his eyes off it as it continued to grow, acquired depth, became a red wooden ball, falling from the sky, to smack at last into the hand of—
“You called?” Zivano inquired.
Mordecai twisted around to survey his old enemy malevolently through eyes too dry for tears. “Come to gloat?” he rasped, his throat scraped raw by the passage of grief.
“You always were an idiot, del Aguila,” Zivano said. “No, I've come to help.” He was carrying something in the crook of one arm, something that spun and shone and hurt Mordecai's eyes. It looked completely different from the last time he had seen it. He recognised it at once.
“You...” He coughed. “You brought the Panergodyne...here?”
“We're going to need power,” Zivano said, “and you're the only one who can use it. Tamland won't come to any harm for an hour or so. Besides, it's been missing you.”
“Why...why are you helping me?” Mordecai said, reaching out with his mind for the Panergodyne and feeling its power pouring into him like cool, foaming water. In turn he gentled it and stroked it and soothed its turbulent patterns.
“Long story,” Zivano said, “and your...boy...here is about to stop breathing. I'm sensing about five days of dependence on a really vicious drug. We can sort out the bodily addiction, using the Panergodyne as a buffer for the pain, but the mind—”
“I know,” Mordecai said, luxuriating in the return of the power he all too easily thought of as his. “The mind will take a great deal of care and attention to heal. I can provide that.”
“Very well, then,” Zivano said. “Let's do this.”
He placed the Panergodyne on Willibald's chest, where it hovered about an inch above the remains of the boy's tunic. He placed his hands over the spinning sphere with its heart of fire, and Mordecai placed his hands on top.
Together, very slowly and deliberately, they spoke three words that hurt their tongues.
Willibald's skinny body convulsed, and a thin wail emerged from the pallid lips; but then he relaxed into what seemed like natural sleep, and a touch of colour returned to his skin. Zivano and Mordecai, sharing an embarrassed glance, reclaimed their hands.
“You have changed,” Mordecai said, surprised.
“You began it,” Zivano said, gesturing for Mordecai to take the Panergodyne. “Now, I suggest we had better—”
“Wait a minute,” Mordecai said. He walked over to where two troopers were examining the cut edges of the net.
“Did anyone see it happen?” he asked.
“No, sir,” the nearest trooper said. “Everyone was looking at you.”
“Of course,” Mordecai said. He turned and walked over to the crowd standing by the gates, where the floor was still dry. He approached Aldro Stychel's group, looked from one face to another, looked down at their feet, and sighed.
“Master Stychel,” he said, “I regret to inform you that one of your charges is a murderer, a dealer in narcotics, and may be guilty of other crimes yet to come to light. I am only sorry I did not see it sooner.” He turned to the boys again.
With an animal moan of terror, Thavaar broke and ran. He careered around the ap Gavrus sisters, skidded to a halt as more troopers advanced, cutting him off from the gates, doubled back on himself, hesitated, sobbing and glancing frantically left and right as the troopers closed in, dashed up the gangplank and on to the boat, and was suddenly enveloped in the bearlike embrace of Master Hudge, the Extricator.
Hudge muffled Thavaar's outcries with one huge hand, while he gazed mildly around at the assembled company.
“Have I missed a great deal?” he inquired.
*
“'The murderer is Thavaar,'” Varnak said. “That's what Mistress Elouyne was trying to tell us. We got so hung up on 'is the' we never thought that other things begin with TH.”
He, Mordecai, Gisel, Zivano, and King Bran were all sitting round Willibald's bed in the apartments above the magery. The apprentice was still pale, prone to sudden outbreaks of weeping, and grew easily tired, but his eyes were alive again, and shone with the old fierceness. Mordecai was back in his customary finery, his hair magically grown out, the Panergodyne, still in its new shape, was back in his workroom, and Willibald was safely back in his proper gender. All was well.
“And you worked it all out, did you, Mordecai?” Gisel said.
“I did not work anything out,” Mordecai said. “I completely failed. If Thavaar had not tried that last desperate throw to kill me, I would never have known it was he.”
Gisel raised an eyebrow.
“Only one of the boys had wet feet,” Mordecai explained. “When he cut the net, the submersible craft caused a wave. It soaked his legs.”
“It all fits together, though,” Varnak said. “Thavaar's aunt is—was—Lady Ralitz. He apparently nosed out her secret on a family visit and blackmailed her into letting him handle the Hyrcassos market. Even he had no idea what his aunt was intending, though.”
“The first murder was sheer panic,” Mordecai said. “He had had no idea Parrunz was a Penny when he sold him the drugs. He thought he was being entrapped, and simply struck out the next time their paths crossed.” He shook his head. “I actually saw him, it must have been moments after, walking along the deck, but I did not know what he had done, or even who he was, at that point.”
“Did he know about the Chotani?” Bran asked.
“I don't think so,” Varnak replied. “He says not, and I think he's telling the truth. He was the one who shot Hudge, intending I think to kill him, but for some reason Hudge didn't get the full dose, and he was still awake when he hit the water and saw the submersible thingy. So they hauled him inside, intending either to kill him or enslave him.”
“Or both,” Willibald said quietly.
“It was Thavaar's first time with the blowpipe, and Hudge was a moving target in the dark,” Mordecai pointed out. “The dart may have glanced off.”
“What gets me, though,” Gisel said, “is the sheer horror of it. There you were, worrying your chine out about Willibald, and there he was, being towed along just a few yards away from you and you couldn't tell.”
“The records we found on the submersible told us a lot,” Varnak said, covering Mordecai's silence. “Hudge made us a translation, because he knows the language. It was typical of them, he says, the dull, relentless, inhuman logic of it. They had to get to Freeport, and the river was the only way. That craft actually had an engine, powered by bands of úllama under tension, rather like clockwork in a way, but it was an effort winding it up every day and neither Chaz nor Zorn wanted to be bothered, so they simply anchored themselves on to the boat and let us tow them. Chaz called it 'an elegant solution.'”
“They could have been in Freeport days before the boat,” Mordecai said, “but then they would have had to wait anyway.”
“I'm sorry I killed Chaz,” Willibald said. “I didn't mean to. He just caught his head wrong way on wall when I jumped at him.” Her face darkened for a moment. “I wanted him to face justice. Preferably my lot's. No offence, your majesty.”
“Where did they get witch-wards that powerful?” Gisel asked.
“Elouyne?” Mordecai suggested.
“Maybe,” Willibald said, “but if she'd kenned I were there she'd have ripped that thing apart to get me out. She loved me, I think. In a shrivelled, scheming, rotten-hearted way,” he added.
“Some things we may never know,” Bran said, “though I shall be making very pointed enquiries. But all's well that ends well,” he added rather tritely. “Lady Ralitz is dead—poisoned herself in her cell—her drug business is broken, the murderer is caught and in prison, and we have an excellent bargaining point to use on the Chotani for this úllama stuff. It's watertight and airtight, you know, you could do all sorts of things with it.” His hands unconsciously shaped a ball in the air before him.
“What about you?” Gisel asked Zivano. “Do you still want Mordecai severed from the Panergodyne and thrown out of his job?”
Zivano affected to consider for a few moments, then sighed. “No,” he said. “It would serve no good purpose and it would not satisfy me, now.”
“What happened to 'I would not be who I am'?”
Zivano laughed. “I fear that boat has already sailed,” he said, stressing the word “boat” and making Mordecai flinch. “I am not who I was. I think, on the whole, I find the change an improvement. No, del Aguila, you can keep your job. I will simply remain here, in case you need assistance at any time, and derive my vengeance from watching whatever trouble you manage to get yourself mixed up in next.”
“Well,” Mordecai said, “for myself, I intend never to leave Tamshold again, especially not via the river, and especially not with this one.” He indicated Varnak, who laughed. “And as for you,” Mordecai added to Willibald, “I am never letting you out of my sight again. Not for one instant.”
His long brown hand was covering Willibald's small pale one where it rested on the counterpane. Everyone at once made a great show of not noticing.
“Great Tam, is that the time?” Bran said, though no clock had struck. “I must be toddling along. Lots to do, lots to do.”
“And you and I are due at magery,” Gisel told Zivano. “Mordecai, you're on tomorrow.”
“I am looking forward to it already,” Mordecai declared.
Varnak was still sitting there, smiling vaguely into the middle distance. Mordecai made a very loud throat-clearing noise, and the prince came to himself with a jump.
“Oh,” he said. “Gooseberry, am I? All right, Mordecai, no problem, I can take a hint as well as the next man.” He got up, ambled to the door, and went out, somehow still grinning with the back of his head.
“Idiots,” Mordecai muttered. “Can a magician not be quite understandably concerned about his apprentice without everyone assuming there is something more to it?”
“It's a shame is what it is,” Willibald agreed, smiling tiredly. “Mind, chuck, tha's not goin' to have an easy time on it. That stuff's still got its hooks into me. Got some sweating to do afore I'm clear on't.”
“I know,” Mordecai said. “I shall be here.”
“And bad dreams,” Willibald went on warningly. “Proper nightmares.”
“I will take care of them,” Mordecai promised.
“Always?”
“Always.”
“Did tha ken tha's still holding us hand?”
“What?” Mordecai almost moved his hand sharply away; then he thought better of it and left it where it was. “Yes,” he said. “I meant to do that.”
“Good,” Willibald said sleepily, and closed her eyes.
END
ECHOES DOWN THE CORRIDOR
King Kaz of the Chotani died six months after these events, having neither expanded his territory nor sired further issue. The crown passed to his brother Dez, a man without ambition, who happily and unconditionally signed over all rights to harvest and develop úllama to the Court of Tamland. Several punitive expeditions sent from Briom and Tsenesh have not been heard from since.
Hudge and Gudge, joyously reunited, resumed their conjoined callings; but the fun had gone out of it for Hudge, and he found an inconvenient conscience hindering his endeavours. The two later married and joined the priesthood of Iuthabaldro, the goddess of those who are lost.
The ap Gavrus sisters, established in Kyriopolis society, became much sought after, and in due course Maranni and Idyla both contracted very advantageous marriages. Lonira remained single by choice, and the joke between the sisters was that she was saving herself for Lord Ambril Vodantis.
Of Aldro Stychel's three remaining students, Driskil died after falling beneath the wheels of a runaway cart; Burlox threw himself into studying and gained a professorship in history; and Gorol Felk returned to Hyrcassos, took up his father's business, and can still be heard in the inn most evenings complaining about how it (whatever “it” may be) is all the fault of those bloody foreigners. His occasional mysterious absences from home cause little comment. They keep themselves to themselves in Hyrcassos.
Aldro Stychel himself is still a teacher.
Master Churidang never had the chance to do unto the murderer of Parrunz that which she had vowed to do. She refuses, however, to let this failure embitter her, and compensates by beating up other criminals a little bit harder. The Admonitory Hand have lodged seven complaints against the Penetrating Light on grounds of demarcation violations, all naming Master Churidang.
Thavaar escaped after two years and three months in the royal dungeon of Tamland. His whereabouts are currently unknown.
Six weeks after these events, the girl Ollamy came to the palace with a basket. In it were two kittens: a ginger tom with huge feet and an inquisitive, combative air, and a smaller, quieter black kitten with big, sad hazel eyes. Gisel adopted them, but has yet to name them.
The MS is now in the hands of a reliable editor, who will point out to me such things as Mordecai being good at languages on one page and hopeless at them on another, and hopefully a revised and improved text will be available in print or ebook form via Lulu in due course. In the meantime, if you want an electronic ARC of the text as it stands, let me know via email and I will send you one.
And, of course, if you would like to comment on this chapter or the story as a whole, that would make me very very happy indeed.
Thanks for reading.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
“Lady Ralitz,” Gisel said.
“Lady Andemar. And your majesty. Well, this is a surprise.” Lady Ralitz smiled with perfect savoir-faire as she rose from her chair. “May I offer you some tea?”
“Not this time, I think,” Gisel said. “But thank you all the same.” Gisel stood aside as Zivano walked between them into the room. “I believe you've met.”
Lady Ralitz's face twisted into a mask of rage, and she reached for something down beside her chair. Zivano made a single gesture, and she froze.
“You viper!” she spat at Zivano. “You disgusting pig!”
“Enough of that,” Zivano said easily, gesturing again. Unwillingly, Lady Ralitz straightened up, while Gisel retrieved the small bulb of úllama from the floor. “Handle that very carefully, Gisel, and don't squeeze it whatever you do. Now then, my lady, I'm going to ask you some questions, and you're going to answer them truthfully.”
“I'll never tell you anything,” Lady Ralitz snarled.
“Oh yes, you will,” Zivano said. “Because, you see, I'm going to use magic.” He made a gesture, and Lady Ralitz's head twisted upwards and to the right.
*
“We almost missed it, my lord,” one of the troopers was saying to Varnak when Mordecai caught up. Behind him, he knew, Stychel and his boys were crowding through the harbour gates, followed by Churidang and the ap Gavrus sisters.
The net that had been blocking the upstream entrance to the harbour was now being held by two troopers at either end, with the bulk of it immersed in the water. Between the two ends could be seen, above the surface, the top of a sort of domed metal object, oval in shape and about fifteen feet across, with a round door or lid in the centre, secured by a wheel.
“It's attached to the stern of the boat by a sort of hook,” the trooper was saying. “Boat must have been pulling it along all the way. Boatmaster Flood's in a right paddy about it.”
“Under the water,” Mordecai said. Even looking at it, he had a strong sense that the thing was not there at all, but now, with his eyesight for reference, he could recognise strong Tseneshi witch-wards. I wonder where they got those, he thought. And: I thought they were against the use of magic.
“That's right, sir,” the trooper said. “We haven't opened it up yet, sir, in case as there might be traps, and, well, long and the short of it is, sir, we were wondering if you would care to go first.”
Mordecai pulled himself together. “Yes, of course, officer,” he said. “Please tell your men to keep well back. Nobody should be near this thing. That goes for you too, your royal highness.”
Varnak blinked at the use of his full title, but acquiesced, and as the troopers fell back, Mordecai advanced on the object. A plank had been stretched from the shore to the top of it, just short of the lid, and Mordecai felt a twinge of prospective vertigo, remembering the gangplank in Tamshold; but he shook it off. This was important.
He walked carefully along the plank, knelt down in front of the lid, and tried turning the wheel, first clockwise, then anticlockwise. The latter proved to be the right direction, and as the lid came loose and hinged up, a puff of stale and fetid air greeted him and nearly caused him to overbalance.
Of course. They must have had to come up for air every night, not to mention food. This is where our tray-stealing ghost came from.
Inside he could see a ladder leading down, and light. Mordecai, holding his breath, clambered awkwardly on to the ladder and descended into the depths. As he did so, he thought he heard running footsteps behind him, but put it out of his mind.
The space inside the strange craft seemed to consist of two rooms, separated by a narrow corridor, and lit by strange glowing tubes. Mordecai examined the first room quickly, and discovered a number of books and papers with writing on them in a weird pictographic language that seemed vaguely familiar from somewhere, and what appeared to be a set of controls, set under a window which currently showed the back of the Pride of Tamland. He crossed the corridor into the second room, and stopped dead.
“Tha's a bit late, chuck,” Willibald Volebreath said wearily.
Mordecai just had time to register the two dead-white, and dead, bodies on the floor, the chair, the tangled ropes, the small bulb-shaped object in Willibald's hand, when the entire craft lurched and heeled over, and he landed clumsily on top of Willibald. Almost at once water began to pour into the room in a torrent.
Mordecai strangled the scream that was trying to come out, and tried to grab Willibald and get back to the door, but the door was now on the ceiling, and Willibald was a dead weight in his arms. The lights flickered and died, and darkness and cold descended on him like a sodden blanket.
“Nay...” he heard the boy say, above the rushing waters. “I be done...tha go...”
“Not on your life,” Mordecai snarled, and tried again, but the water was already half filling the room, and he was losing his grip. With his last effort, he took hold of Willibald by the waist and held him up, his head above the water, and as it closed over his own head he could only hope that whoever had cut the net would turn a corner in hell and bump into him.
The walls were closing in.
*
In a large room, floored, walled and vaulted in stone, a double row of trestle tables had been set up. At them, men and women with cloths wrapped round their faces and strange, thin gloves on their hands worked, grinding, mixing, putting small quantities of powders and grains and liquids into sachets, bottles and jars, under the direction of two men with dead-white skin whose Tamlandish clothes sat uneasily on their skinny bodies.
They looked around, and several of the workers looked up, at the sound of a key turning in the lock of the room's only door.
“Who are you, woman?” one of the pale men said to the woman framed in the doorway.
“She's your employer,” said a voice from behind the woman, “or was. Don't move.”
Both the pale men tried to grab something at their belts, and froze as Zivano, Gisel, King Bran and a squad of palace guards followed Lady Ralitz into the room.
“Under the Temple of None,” Bran said. “Not a bad idea. Nobody would ever think to ask, because nobody ever asks what anyone else is doing here. Captain, make sure nobody touches anything on those tables, and tie those two up securely—these would be Chotani, I take it. Zivano, when our friends are safely bound, if you could dispose of all this filth...”
“Assuredly, your majesty.” Zivano spoke a word with a weird twist halfway through, and there was a poomp! of displaced air as everything on the tables suddenly vanished.
“And now,” Gisel said, as they followed the guards and their prisoners out into the open air, “can we please help Mordecai? Not only do we need him back, but if this Chaz and Zorn are as bad as their lackeys, he could be in terrible danger.”
“I will try,” Zivano said. “Remember, though, I don't have the power of the Panergodyne to draw on. I may not even be able to locate him if he's too far away.” A thought occurred to him. “Wait a moment,” he said, and took off at a surprisingly fast run towards the palace and the magery.
The two Chotani were glaring angrily at Lady Ralitz. Bran grinned.
“I know just what you're thinking,” he said. “You're thinking that the reason your plan failed is because you were taking orders from a woman all this time. You're quite wrong, you know. It was her plan, and it was a diabolically cunning one, misdirection all the way. It would have worked. Only we had magic on our side.”
One of the Chotani spat at the king's feet. “Magic is trickery and illusion,” he snarled, “and the gods a fable for children. Only the physical is real, only the physical is significant. History will prove us right, when all of you are long dead.”
“That's what she thought,” Bran said mildly. “Only the thing about magic, you see, is that it works whether you believe in it or not. Now what she was planning to do with money, that would have been trickery and illusion. It would only have worked as long as people believed in it, and once it was well bedded in, the consequences of it failing to work would have been horrible beyond words. Between that and good honest magic, I know which I prefer.”
Zivano came back, still running. Gisel and Bran looked at what he held in the crook of his arm and did not comment.
“I know where he is,” Zivano said, “and he is indeed in great danger. If you will excuse me, your majesty.”
From his belt pouch he produced a small red wooden ball.
*
Mordecai coughed and retched. His chest was on fire, there was a foul taste in his mouth, his back was cold and wet, and a great ape seemed to be trying to roll him out like pastry. He coughed up more water, flailed his arms weakly, and then Varnak's lips descended over his own and air flooded his lungs.
“You...” Mordecai coughed again, when he was released. “You need a shave.”
Varnak laughed, a little unsteadily. “Thank Tam, Mordecai,” he said. “You're all right?”
“Never mind me, you oaf,” Mordecai snapped, as recollection rushed back. “What about Willibald?”
“We got him out first,” Varnak said, unhappily, “but...well, I don't think there's much we can do for him, Mordecai.”
The last words were uttered in a sort of startled yelp as Mordecai, pushing him aside, sat up, looked around, scrambled to his feet and stumbled across the treacherously wet stone of the dock, over to where the body of his apprentice was lying, surrounded by worried-looking people.
“I'm sorry, sir,” a trooper said. “She doesn't seem to want to live.”
“He,” Mordecai corrected him savagely. “Are you blind?” He knelt down beside Willibald, who gave no sign of consciousness, though the narrow chest still rose and fell. He could see what was wrong. He could not do a thing about it. The spell that had had such a terrible effect on Driskil, even if he had the power left to cast it, would cause even more suffering to Willibald.
“No,” Mordecai said in a low growl. “No. Not like this. Not now. Not here.” A wave of pure rage and pain and loss was swelling up inside him, rage that he had come all this way with Willibald only just behind him and had never known, pain that he had never done or said all the things he had so desperately wanted to do, loss, loss, loss...
He threw back his head and screamed, and all his being, body and soul and heart, rushed up out of him in that scream. It was not a battle cry, not a warning to the lord of the dead, nothing romantic or dramatic or even in any way intended. It was simply a consequence, like thunder after lightning.
And in the silence, at the bottom of his lungs and unable to make himself breathe in, with his eyes still fixed on heaven and his whole body aching with the force of the scream, Mordecai saw a tiny red dot against the clouded heaven. It grew, and grew, and he was unable to take his eyes off it as it continued to grow, acquired depth, became a red wooden ball, falling from the sky, to smack at last into the hand of—
“You called?” Zivano inquired.
Mordecai twisted around to survey his old enemy malevolently through eyes too dry for tears. “Come to gloat?” he rasped, his throat scraped raw by the passage of grief.
“You always were an idiot, del Aguila,” Zivano said. “No, I've come to help.” He was carrying something in the crook of one arm, something that spun and shone and hurt Mordecai's eyes. It looked completely different from the last time he had seen it. He recognised it at once.
“You...” He coughed. “You brought the Panergodyne...here?”
“We're going to need power,” Zivano said, “and you're the only one who can use it. Tamland won't come to any harm for an hour or so. Besides, it's been missing you.”
“Why...why are you helping me?” Mordecai said, reaching out with his mind for the Panergodyne and feeling its power pouring into him like cool, foaming water. In turn he gentled it and stroked it and soothed its turbulent patterns.
“Long story,” Zivano said, “and your...boy...here is about to stop breathing. I'm sensing about five days of dependence on a really vicious drug. We can sort out the bodily addiction, using the Panergodyne as a buffer for the pain, but the mind—”
“I know,” Mordecai said, luxuriating in the return of the power he all too easily thought of as his. “The mind will take a great deal of care and attention to heal. I can provide that.”
“Very well, then,” Zivano said. “Let's do this.”
He placed the Panergodyne on Willibald's chest, where it hovered about an inch above the remains of the boy's tunic. He placed his hands over the spinning sphere with its heart of fire, and Mordecai placed his hands on top.
Together, very slowly and deliberately, they spoke three words that hurt their tongues.
Willibald's skinny body convulsed, and a thin wail emerged from the pallid lips; but then he relaxed into what seemed like natural sleep, and a touch of colour returned to his skin. Zivano and Mordecai, sharing an embarrassed glance, reclaimed their hands.
“You have changed,” Mordecai said, surprised.
“You began it,” Zivano said, gesturing for Mordecai to take the Panergodyne. “Now, I suggest we had better—”
“Wait a minute,” Mordecai said. He walked over to where two troopers were examining the cut edges of the net.
“Did anyone see it happen?” he asked.
“No, sir,” the nearest trooper said. “Everyone was looking at you.”
“Of course,” Mordecai said. He turned and walked over to the crowd standing by the gates, where the floor was still dry. He approached Aldro Stychel's group, looked from one face to another, looked down at their feet, and sighed.
“Master Stychel,” he said, “I regret to inform you that one of your charges is a murderer, a dealer in narcotics, and may be guilty of other crimes yet to come to light. I am only sorry I did not see it sooner.” He turned to the boys again.
With an animal moan of terror, Thavaar broke and ran. He careered around the ap Gavrus sisters, skidded to a halt as more troopers advanced, cutting him off from the gates, doubled back on himself, hesitated, sobbing and glancing frantically left and right as the troopers closed in, dashed up the gangplank and on to the boat, and was suddenly enveloped in the bearlike embrace of Master Hudge, the Extricator.
Hudge muffled Thavaar's outcries with one huge hand, while he gazed mildly around at the assembled company.
“Have I missed a great deal?” he inquired.
*
“'The murderer is Thavaar,'” Varnak said. “That's what Mistress Elouyne was trying to tell us. We got so hung up on 'is the' we never thought that other things begin with TH.”
He, Mordecai, Gisel, Zivano, and King Bran were all sitting round Willibald's bed in the apartments above the magery. The apprentice was still pale, prone to sudden outbreaks of weeping, and grew easily tired, but his eyes were alive again, and shone with the old fierceness. Mordecai was back in his customary finery, his hair magically grown out, the Panergodyne, still in its new shape, was back in his workroom, and Willibald was safely back in his proper gender. All was well.
“And you worked it all out, did you, Mordecai?” Gisel said.
“I did not work anything out,” Mordecai said. “I completely failed. If Thavaar had not tried that last desperate throw to kill me, I would never have known it was he.”
Gisel raised an eyebrow.
“Only one of the boys had wet feet,” Mordecai explained. “When he cut the net, the submersible craft caused a wave. It soaked his legs.”
“It all fits together, though,” Varnak said. “Thavaar's aunt is—was—Lady Ralitz. He apparently nosed out her secret on a family visit and blackmailed her into letting him handle the Hyrcassos market. Even he had no idea what his aunt was intending, though.”
“The first murder was sheer panic,” Mordecai said. “He had had no idea Parrunz was a Penny when he sold him the drugs. He thought he was being entrapped, and simply struck out the next time their paths crossed.” He shook his head. “I actually saw him, it must have been moments after, walking along the deck, but I did not know what he had done, or even who he was, at that point.”
“Did he know about the Chotani?” Bran asked.
“I don't think so,” Varnak replied. “He says not, and I think he's telling the truth. He was the one who shot Hudge, intending I think to kill him, but for some reason Hudge didn't get the full dose, and he was still awake when he hit the water and saw the submersible thingy. So they hauled him inside, intending either to kill him or enslave him.”
“Or both,” Willibald said quietly.
“It was Thavaar's first time with the blowpipe, and Hudge was a moving target in the dark,” Mordecai pointed out. “The dart may have glanced off.”
“What gets me, though,” Gisel said, “is the sheer horror of it. There you were, worrying your chine out about Willibald, and there he was, being towed along just a few yards away from you and you couldn't tell.”
“The records we found on the submersible told us a lot,” Varnak said, covering Mordecai's silence. “Hudge made us a translation, because he knows the language. It was typical of them, he says, the dull, relentless, inhuman logic of it. They had to get to Freeport, and the river was the only way. That craft actually had an engine, powered by bands of úllama under tension, rather like clockwork in a way, but it was an effort winding it up every day and neither Chaz nor Zorn wanted to be bothered, so they simply anchored themselves on to the boat and let us tow them. Chaz called it 'an elegant solution.'”
“They could have been in Freeport days before the boat,” Mordecai said, “but then they would have had to wait anyway.”
“I'm sorry I killed Chaz,” Willibald said. “I didn't mean to. He just caught his head wrong way on wall when I jumped at him.” Her face darkened for a moment. “I wanted him to face justice. Preferably my lot's. No offence, your majesty.”
“Where did they get witch-wards that powerful?” Gisel asked.
“Elouyne?” Mordecai suggested.
“Maybe,” Willibald said, “but if she'd kenned I were there she'd have ripped that thing apart to get me out. She loved me, I think. In a shrivelled, scheming, rotten-hearted way,” he added.
“Some things we may never know,” Bran said, “though I shall be making very pointed enquiries. But all's well that ends well,” he added rather tritely. “Lady Ralitz is dead—poisoned herself in her cell—her drug business is broken, the murderer is caught and in prison, and we have an excellent bargaining point to use on the Chotani for this úllama stuff. It's watertight and airtight, you know, you could do all sorts of things with it.” His hands unconsciously shaped a ball in the air before him.
“What about you?” Gisel asked Zivano. “Do you still want Mordecai severed from the Panergodyne and thrown out of his job?”
Zivano affected to consider for a few moments, then sighed. “No,” he said. “It would serve no good purpose and it would not satisfy me, now.”
“What happened to 'I would not be who I am'?”
Zivano laughed. “I fear that boat has already sailed,” he said, stressing the word “boat” and making Mordecai flinch. “I am not who I was. I think, on the whole, I find the change an improvement. No, del Aguila, you can keep your job. I will simply remain here, in case you need assistance at any time, and derive my vengeance from watching whatever trouble you manage to get yourself mixed up in next.”
“Well,” Mordecai said, “for myself, I intend never to leave Tamshold again, especially not via the river, and especially not with this one.” He indicated Varnak, who laughed. “And as for you,” Mordecai added to Willibald, “I am never letting you out of my sight again. Not for one instant.”
His long brown hand was covering Willibald's small pale one where it rested on the counterpane. Everyone at once made a great show of not noticing.
“Great Tam, is that the time?” Bran said, though no clock had struck. “I must be toddling along. Lots to do, lots to do.”
“And you and I are due at magery,” Gisel told Zivano. “Mordecai, you're on tomorrow.”
“I am looking forward to it already,” Mordecai declared.
Varnak was still sitting there, smiling vaguely into the middle distance. Mordecai made a very loud throat-clearing noise, and the prince came to himself with a jump.
“Oh,” he said. “Gooseberry, am I? All right, Mordecai, no problem, I can take a hint as well as the next man.” He got up, ambled to the door, and went out, somehow still grinning with the back of his head.
“Idiots,” Mordecai muttered. “Can a magician not be quite understandably concerned about his apprentice without everyone assuming there is something more to it?”
“It's a shame is what it is,” Willibald agreed, smiling tiredly. “Mind, chuck, tha's not goin' to have an easy time on it. That stuff's still got its hooks into me. Got some sweating to do afore I'm clear on't.”
“I know,” Mordecai said. “I shall be here.”
“And bad dreams,” Willibald went on warningly. “Proper nightmares.”
“I will take care of them,” Mordecai promised.
“Always?”
“Always.”
“Did tha ken tha's still holding us hand?”
“What?” Mordecai almost moved his hand sharply away; then he thought better of it and left it where it was. “Yes,” he said. “I meant to do that.”
“Good,” Willibald said sleepily, and closed her eyes.
END
ECHOES DOWN THE CORRIDOR
King Kaz of the Chotani died six months after these events, having neither expanded his territory nor sired further issue. The crown passed to his brother Dez, a man without ambition, who happily and unconditionally signed over all rights to harvest and develop úllama to the Court of Tamland. Several punitive expeditions sent from Briom and Tsenesh have not been heard from since.
Hudge and Gudge, joyously reunited, resumed their conjoined callings; but the fun had gone out of it for Hudge, and he found an inconvenient conscience hindering his endeavours. The two later married and joined the priesthood of Iuthabaldro, the goddess of those who are lost.
The ap Gavrus sisters, established in Kyriopolis society, became much sought after, and in due course Maranni and Idyla both contracted very advantageous marriages. Lonira remained single by choice, and the joke between the sisters was that she was saving herself for Lord Ambril Vodantis.
Of Aldro Stychel's three remaining students, Driskil died after falling beneath the wheels of a runaway cart; Burlox threw himself into studying and gained a professorship in history; and Gorol Felk returned to Hyrcassos, took up his father's business, and can still be heard in the inn most evenings complaining about how it (whatever “it” may be) is all the fault of those bloody foreigners. His occasional mysterious absences from home cause little comment. They keep themselves to themselves in Hyrcassos.
Aldro Stychel himself is still a teacher.
Master Churidang never had the chance to do unto the murderer of Parrunz that which she had vowed to do. She refuses, however, to let this failure embitter her, and compensates by beating up other criminals a little bit harder. The Admonitory Hand have lodged seven complaints against the Penetrating Light on grounds of demarcation violations, all naming Master Churidang.
Thavaar escaped after two years and three months in the royal dungeon of Tamland. His whereabouts are currently unknown.
Six weeks after these events, the girl Ollamy came to the palace with a basket. In it were two kittens: a ginger tom with huge feet and an inquisitive, combative air, and a smaller, quieter black kitten with big, sad hazel eyes. Gisel adopted them, but has yet to name them.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2016-10-09 10:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-10-09 11:46 am (UTC)