"Ehirme, your loyalty is commendable. I can only wish that my daughter had given me a similar service. I will not here and now review her case, nor explain the apparent severity of her punishment, save to state that, as a royal princess her first duty is to the kingdom.
"We will discuss this matter no longer. I now refer to that child borne by Princess Suldrun in what seems to have been lawful wedlock, which makes the child legitimate, hence a subject for my dutiful concern. I must now ask the seneschal to send you out with a suitable escort, that we may have the child here at Haidion where it belongs."
Ehirme blinked indecisively. "May I ask, sire, without giving offense: what of Princess Suldrun, since the child is hers?"
Again King Casmir pondered his reply; again he spoke gently. "You are properly steadfast in your concern for the errant princess.
"First, as to the marriage, I now declare it void, null and contrary to the interests of the state, though the child can only be considered legitimate. As for Princess Suldrun, I will go so far: if she submissively declares her wrong-doing, if she will affirm an intent to act henceforth in full obedience to my orders, she may return to Haidion, and assume the condition of mother to her child. But first and immediately we shall fetch the child."
Ehirme licked her lips, wiped her nose with the back of her hand, looked to right, then to left. She said in a tentative voice:
"Your Majesty's edict is very good. I beg your leave to bring these words of hope to the Princess Suldrun, and lessen her grief.
May I just run now to the garden?"
King Casmir gave a grim nod. "You may do so, as soon as we know where to find the child."
"Your Majesty, I cannot reveal her secret! In your generosity, bring her here and tell her the good news!"
King Casmir's eyelids dropped the sixteenth part of an inch. "Do not put loyalty to the princess above duty to me, your king. I ask you the question once more only. Where is the child?"
Ehirme croaked, "Sire, I beg that you put the question to Suldrun."
King Casmir gave a small jerk of the head and twitch of the hand: signals adequately familiar to those who served him, and Ehirme was led from the hall.
During the night Suldrun's sleep, fitful at the best, was disturbed by a periodic mad howling from the Peinhador. She could not identify the quality of the sound, and tried to ignore it.
Padraig, Ehirme's third son, rushed across the Urquial to the Peinhador and flung himself upon Zerling. "No more! She will not tell you, but I will! Only now have I returned from Glym-wode, where I took the cursed brat; there you will find it."
Zerling suspended torment upon the sprawled mound of flesh, and informed King Casmir, who instantly sent a party of four knights and two wet nurses in a carriage to retrieve the child. Then he asked Zerling: "Did the message come through the woman's mouth?"
"No, your Majesty. She will not speak."
"Prepare to cut a hand and a foot each from her husband and sons, unless she passes the words through her mouth."
Ehirme saw the grisly preparations through filmed eyes. Zerling said: "Woman, a party is on its way to bring the child back from Glymwode. The king insists that, in order to obey his command, you respond to the question; otherwise your husband and sons must each lose a hand and foot. I ask you: where is the child?"
Padraig cried out: "Speak, mother! Silence has no more meaning!"
Ehirme said in a heavy croak, "The baby is at Glymwode. There, you have it."
Zerling loosed the men and sent them out into the Urquial. Then he took a pincers, pulled Ehirme's tongue from her head and slit it in two. With red-hot iron he seared the wound to staunch the blood, and such was Casmir's final penalty upon Ehirme.
In the garden the first day went by slowly, instant after hesitant instant, each approaching diffidently, as if on tiptoe, to hurry across the plane of the present and lose itself among the glooms and shadows of the past.
The second day was hazy, less breathless, but the air hung heavy with portent.
The third day, still hazy, seemed sluggish and drained of sensibility, yet somehow innocent and sweet, as if ready for renewal. On this day Suldrun went slowly about the garden, pausing at times to touch the trunk of a tree, or the face of a stone.
With head bent she walked the length of her beach, and only once paused to look to sea. Then she climbed the path, to sit among the ruins.
The afternoon passed: a golden dreaming time, and the stone cliffs encompassed the whole of the universe.
The sun sank softly and quietly. Suldrun nodded pensively, as if here were elucidation of an uncertainty, though tears coursed down her cheeks.
The stars appeared. Suldrun descended to the old lime tree and, in the dim light of the stars, she hanged herself. The moon, rising over the ridge, shone on a limp form and a sad sweet face, already preoccupied with her new knowledge.
Chapter 17
AT THE BOTTOM OF THE OUBLIETTE, Aillas no longer considered himself alone. With great patience he had arranged along one wall twelve skeletons. In days long past, when each of the individuals so represented had walked his term of days as a man, and at the end as a prisoner, each had scratched his name, and often a motto, into the rock wall: twelve names to match twelve skeletons. There had been no rescues, pardons, or escapes; such seemed to be the message of the correspondence. Aillas started to inscribe his own name, using the edge of a buckle; then in a spasm of anger he desisted. Such an act meant resignation, and presaged the thirteenth skeleton.
Aillas confronted his new friends. To each he had assigned one of the names, possibly without accuracy. "Still," Aillas told the group, "a name is a name, and were one of you to address me incorrectly, I would take no offense."
He called his new friends to order: "Gentlemen, we sit in conclave, to share our collective wisdom and to ratify a common policy. There are no rules of order; let spontaneity serve us all, within the limits of decorum.
"Our general topic is 'escape.' It is a subject we all have considered, evidently without enlightenment. Some of you may regard the matter as no longer consequential; still, a victory for one is a victory for all! Let us define the problem. Simply stated, it is the act of ascending the shaft, from here to the surface. I believe that if I were able to gain the bottom of the shaft I could climb crab-wise to the surface.
"To this end, I need to elevate myself twelve feet into the shaft, and this is a formidable problem. I cannot jump so high. I have no ladder. You, my colleagues, while strong of bone, lack sinew and muscle... Might it be that with a resourceful use of these bones and yonder rope something could be contrived? I see before me twelve skulls, twelve pelvises, twenty-four thighbones, twentyfour shin-bones, and a like number of upper arms and lower arms, many ribs and a large number of accessory parts.
"Gentlemen, there is work to be done. The time has come for adjournment. Will someone make the appropriate motion?"
A guttural voice said: "I move to dissolve the conference sine die."
Aillas stared around the line of skeletons. Which had spoken? Or had it been his own voice? After a pause he asked: "Are there negative votes?"
Silence.
"In that case," said Aillas, "the conclave is dissolved."
He set himself to work at once, disassembling each skeleton, sorting the components, testing them in new combinations to discover optimum linkages. Then he began to build, fitting bone to bone with care and precision, grinding against stone when necessary and securing the joints with rope fiber. He started with four pelvises, which he joined with struts of bound ribs. Upon this foundation he mounted the four largest femurs and surmounted these with four more pelvises, and braced with more ribs. Upon this platform he fixed four more femurs, and four final pelvises, bracing and cross-bracing to insure rigidity. He had now achieved a ladder of two stages, which when he tested it bore his weight with no complaint. Then up another stage and another. He worked without haste, while days became weeks, determined that the ladder should not fail at the critical moment. To control sidewise sway, he worked bone splinters into the floor and set up rope guys; the solidity of the structure gave him a ferocious satisfaction. The ladder was now his whole life, a thing of beauty in itself, so that escape began to be of less consequence than the magnificent ladder. He reveled in the spare white struts, the neat joints, the noble upward thrust.