The pace of memory increased, intensity deepening as experience built on experience. Growth, responsibilities and a gathering realization of alienation. The first death, an accident in a wrestling match, cause for mild regret, but an awesome revelation all the same that he had such power in his own two hands. Eresken grew sick with panic at the memory of the Sheltya attempting to discipline this mind and the way it had made this madman determined never to suffer such invasion again. This defiance was something entirely beyond Eresken’s experience.
He flinched from vivid images of warfare, bloody set battles with army cutting army to pieces, smaller vicious skirmishes at night or from ambush. Comrades came and went, either to their deaths or getting out while still alive to spend their coin. All losses were regretted and none. In the mercenary life there were no restrictions, only freedoms. Orders were followed if agreeable, evaded if not. One brother relied on persuasive reasoning to avert disaster where possible, the other on physical resilience to get them both out of ever more hazardous situations.
Every death was held up to Eresken’s appalled gaze, a chilling chuckle echoing around and around him. ’Gren was amused by his captive’s reaction and piled horror on horror. Rivals were stabbed or beheaded in unexpected assault. Any enemy identified was murdered as soon as possible before they could launch their own attack. Gratifying deaths, these. Men were disemboweled in battle and bled out their life with unavailing curses and pleas; such deaths were not directly pleasurable, but welcome insofar as they brought loot and payment to spend on the parallel pleasures of women and gambling. Those fallen foul of the crude discipline of the battlefield were hanged from the nearest sturdy tree, bodies jerking in the throes of slow strangulation, deaths of no consequence.
Eresken felt his defenses crumbling beneath the unrelenting onslaught, sanctuary shrunk to a cramped desperation, vainly struggling to hold out against the contempt crushing him. He couldn’t feel the floor beneath his feet, the stone beneath his fingers, no sensation of breath rasped in his throat, no pulse of terror rang its beat through his body.
There was nothing but this shattering ridicule breaking him apart.
“You’re a coward, aren’t you?” the hateful voice continued in a conversational tone. “There’s nothing for you in the hand-to-hand, the kill-or-be-killed, the ultimate gamble. You fix the odds by messing with people’s minds. You’ll send folk to their deaths with your trickery but you don’t like to do the killing yourself. Now you’ve made a mistake because you’ve gambled more than you’re willing to lose, pal. You shouldn’t ever do that. You’re not really a killer, not truly, but I am, and that means you’re the one who’s going to die.”
The Teyvarekin,
18th of Aft-Summer
“You can let go of me.” I twisted vainly against Sorgrad’s iron grip. My wrists would carry the mark of his fingers long after I’d washed off ’Gren’s handprints.
“Drop the knife,” he commanded. “If anyone kills him, it’ll be me.”
I complied with difficulty, bloodless fingers numb. The blade with its oily smear of tahn clattered to the floorboards.
We stood still as statues on a shrine, me and Sorgrad poised, the Elietimm frozen, eyes empty hollows into the blackness of his heart, ’Gren motionless beneath a mask of blood, face slack, gaze of sunlit blue glazed over.
“If his eyes go black, it means they have him,” I warned Sorgrad, trying to watch both unmoving figures and find some weapon within reach all at the same time.
’Gren blinked sapphire eyes and I jumped as if I had been stuck with a brooch pin. “Are you all right?” The Elietimm slid down the wall. “Is he dead?” I demanded hoarsely.
“I reckon so.” My heart rose at ’Gren’s familiar cheeky grin.
“What did you do?” Sorgrad was checking the limp figure for breath or pulse of life.
“He got inside my head and I didn’t like it.” ’Gren shrugged. “What he didn’t expect was me not letting him out.”
“You’re telling me you know Sheltya tricks?” I couldn’t stop my voice from shaking.
“No.” ’Gren sounded a little affronted. “But he came rummaging around in my mind, so that meant I could have a look around his. I decided he was a worthless piece of shit so I sort of squashed him. He didn’t put up much of a fight.”
“I don’t suppose he’d expected one.” And of course, ’Gren never believed he could be beaten, did he?
“You’re sure he’s dead?” Sorgrad kicked the Elietimm with all his strength and a metal-capped boot.
Recollection quenched my sudden optimism that we had finally found a weakness in the Elietimm.
“Artifice can separate mind and body,” I said with a sinking feeling. That was how the colonists of Kellarin had passed countless generations untouched by the years, down in their hidden cave.
“So his mind could have fled somewhere safer?” Sorgrad looked down at the inert heap. I wondered how a man who’d wielded such fear in my imagination could be reduced to an insignificant figure, dirty blond hair falling over a nondescript face hollow with hunger and shadowed with weariness, clothes stained, boots thick with the dust of travel.
“We can make sure,” ’Gren said obligingly. He grabbed a fistful of the enchanter’s straggling locks and thrust his knife blade deep into the joint of neck and skull, twisting it around. I wrinkled my nose and coughed on the reek of blood. “I thought Halice was joking when she said you lot used to collect heads.”
“We’d best—”
The opening door slammed into Sorgrad’s words. A woman froze on the threshold, jaw dropping at the carnage within, slate-blue eyes white-rimmed in consternation.
Sorgrad and I had her before she drew breath. Leaping over the bodies, we seized the woman, dragging her into the room with irresistible hands. Kicking the door closed, Sorgrad spun around to force her backward into me in one fluid movement. I had tahn-soaked cloth ready in one palm. Cupping it over her mouth and nose, I twisted my other hand mercilessly in the hood of her long gray robe. Her hands clawed at mine, adding fresh blood to the mess of paint and braises. She kicked like a mule but soft indoor shoes were no real weapon. Sorgrad caught her under the knees, her struggles weakening as the smothering drug and the strangling hood did their work. She went limp and heavy in my arms and we laid her hurriedly on the floor.
“It’s that bitch that threw us out of the Hachalfess,” observed ’Gren, abandoning his grisly attempts to claim a trophy.
“Then she’s Sheltya and that means aetheric magic and that’s what we came for,” I said incoherently. “She’ll do.” Action took over from thought. Pads of soft linen for her eyes, tied tight with broad swathes of bandage. Plugs of wool for her ears, covered with more creamy bands. A kerchief folded around a dark lump of thassin for her mouth, to keep her quiet if the tahn wore off. More bandages tight around her jaw and lower face; let her try enchantment while unable to see or hear or speak.
“She may be unconscious but she does still have to breathe, my girl.” Sorgrad reached down and tweaked a fold of cloth around the unrecognizable woman’s nose.
“Aritane, wasn’t that her name?” ’Gren looked at her with interest.
Tying off the last knot with deft hands, I sat back on my heels, heart drumming, breath fast and furious. My exultation faded at the sight of the younger man, broken like a butchered hog, and the older, unmarked save for the killing gash of Sorgrad’s knife in his throat. “They must have been waiting for the lass, already here before we started watching the stair.”
“I did try to stun her.” Sorgrad looked regretfully at the dead girl, golden curls matted with blood leaking from the shattered bones of her skull puddled around the chair leg he’d used to fell her.