Dragon Blood Page 6

Chapter 6

 

  6 - TISALA

  My aunt says that if common goals make good friends, common enemies make better ones.

  Tisala sat in the private room of the tavern and watched the door. She'd sent out a message over an hour ago, but there was no telling when Rosem would get it. She sipped at her drink and then leaned her head against the wall. The hood of her cloak shielded her eyes from the candlelight and she fell asleep.

  "I thought you were dead," said a quiet voice, waking her. "Let me see your face. "

  Tisala blinked at the man standing beside her table. He was shorter than she, but broad through the shoulders. A scruffy, bright red beard hid the features of his face except for the wide nose that had been broken more than once. She pulled the hood away from her face. "Hello, Rosem. "

  "Gods, girl," he said, sitting across from her. "When the house you were rooming in burned down, I waited for you to turn up for a full week. Then I wrote to your father. "

  "The house burned?" she said. "Did everyone get out?"

  Tight-mouthed, he shook his head. Tisala swallowed and rubbed her face, as if that would wipe away the faces of the people she'd lived with for the past few years. Jakoven must have had the house burned to cover her disappearance.

  Rosem reached out and caught her hand, pulling it into the dim light of the tallow candle.

  "Who took you?" he said.

  She pulled her hand back. "Jakoven. " She explained how she escaped and where. "So you see that I owe the Hurogmeten. Can you get me into the Asylum?"

  The Asylum was a beautiful building about a mile from Jakoven's castle. The pyrite-flecked marble of the facade made it look more like a temple than a holding pen for society's embarrassments. There was even a pond just big enough for the two swans in the small but meticulously groomed lawn.

  Tisala's flesh crawled as she shuffled in beside Rosem. It had taken him a healthy bribe to the woman whose place she took to get Tisala in again. No one would notice the switch because the cleaners were practically interchangeable. The woolen robes they wore were designed to let them fade into the background as they went about their work. They talked only to one another, never to the inmates or the guards. It was a system designed to keep the cleaners ignorant of what went on in the Asylum, but it kept the guards ignorant of the cleaners' world, too.

  They crossed the marble entrance hall quietly, keeping to the left-hand side near the velvet wall hangings. Doubtless had there been another entrance to the Asylum, they, as lowly cleaners, would have taken it; but there was only one way into or out of the building.

  Past the entrance hall they walked through the model cells. Six largish apartments, three on one side, three on the other, were displayed for perusal. Each cell was carpeted, with a padded chair and a brocade-covered bed. Furnished with nothing an inmate could hurt himself with, but with subtle luxury nonetheless. Four of the cells held actors paid to pretend to be mad, but mildly so - nothing that might disturb the family who came to see if the Asylum was safe for their old uncle or mother who had become difficult. Two were left empty in case a family wanted to visit a patient. He or she would be cleaned up and drugged or magicked into some semblance of happiness and settled into one or the other cell an hour or so before their visitors arrived. Unscheduled visits were not allowed.

  Tisala wondered how many of the people who'd incarcerated their problems in the Asylum really believed in the fiction they were presented with. How many of them, when Alizon shut the place down, would exclaim in horror, knowing that as long as they plead ignorance, no one could blame them?

  Silently, Tisala stepped shoulder to shoulder with her guide through the wooden door into the real Asylum. As always, the first thing to assail her was the smell: feces, urine, and covering it all the strong, spicy scent of the brew the cleaners were given to scrub the cells with.

  Without speaking to her confederate, Tisala turned left and entered a small room filled with buckets and mops, and grabbed one of each. Then she moved back into the hall to stand in the silent line that waited to fill their buckets.

  Not that the hall itself was silent. Shrieks and groans echoed wildly from behind the barred doors. Eventually, Tisala knew, she would even get used to that. But always, the first few minutes of it were difficult. She wanted to plug her ears, but that would draw attention. At last she filled her bucket at the stone font that was full of something Jakoven's wizards had brewed up. There was nothing magic about it, herbs and alcohol mostly, or so she'd been told.

  The guard who was in charge of the cleaners gave her the cell numbers she'd expected as he always did. She didn't know if he was one of the rebels or if it was some little trick of Rosem's, and she didn't ask.

  She trudged through the next set of doors with her bucket and mop and shuffled through the maze of halls. She'd memorized a map before the very first time she'd come here, and now she didn't even have to count hallways. She didn't pause when she passed the dead-bolted doors leading into the mage's wing where Ward must be, though she wanted to. That wasn't her assignment today.

  At long last she stopped in front of the solid door of a cell that looked just like the one next to it, except for the number over the door. Setting her bucket down, she pushed the bar up out of its cups. Several doors from her, a guard watched. As long as she didn't scream, or the patient didn't barrel out of the door, he wouldn't interfere.

  She left her mop beside the bucket and got a flimsy wooden hay rake down from the wall in the hallway and entered the cell. The little room had nothing a patient could hurt himself on, but that was the only resemblance between it and the "show" cells near the entrance. The floor was strewn with straw rather than carpets. A hard wooden bench was attached to the wall. It was, barely, wide enough to sleep on if the patient were careful. There was no discreet chamber pot under the bed here.

  Tisala, her nose already hardened to the smell of the Asylum, raked out the foul hay. She found little difference between this and mucking out stalls - though she knew that the man who lay on the bench with his back to her didn't feel the same way. Rosem made certain that everyone who came to visit this cell knew how this inmate felt, and behaved accordingly.

  She did a good job, piling the soiled hay in the center of the hallway, where she or another cleaner would collect it later. That done, she took her mop and bucket and shut the door behind her while she wiped down the floors. She heard the dull thud as the guard barred the door, sealing her in.

  The man didn't stir, so she started to scrub the floor, ridding the room of the smell of human waste. Finally he sat up, but she didn't stop cleaning until he spoke.

  "Tisala, I was glad to hear that you weren't dead. "

  She put the mop down and dropped to her knees before the bedraggled, rag-clothed, painfully thin man who sat cross-legged on the bench.

  "Your majesty. " This man was the truth of the rebellion. It was Jakoven's younger brother, Kellen, whom Alizon worked to put on the throne.

  Though he was sitting, she knew from previous visits that he was half a head shorter than she, and in better times his build would have been stocky. Her father would have said "built like a wall. " His hair was curly and dark with a light frosting of gray. He was barely twenty-six. He'd been fifteen when his much older brother had incarcerated him in the Asylum.

  The public story was that Kellen had been struck by a mysterious illness. Although he recovered physically, the pain had driven him mad. Jakoven built the Asylum for his brother, a peaceful resting place where the aristocracy could safely stow their unwanted members. For the past decade Kellen had been in this cell - but some people had not forgotten him.

  Kellen had once told her that one of Jakoven's wizards had gone to Menogue and received a vision that if the king killed his brother, Jakoven himself would die a hideous, painful death. So when the king decided having a charismatic younger brother was too unsettling, he created the Asylum.

  "Tis
ala," said Kellen again. "Rosem told me you were taken by my brother?"

  It was not really a question, but she told him her story, including as many questions the torturer had asked as she could. She told him why she'd run to Ward of Hurog - not just the danger to Beckram, but the more personal reasons as well. When she was finished, he was quiet. She waited patiently.

  "You appear well. " It wasn't a casual comment, the years in the Asylum had made him distrust most people.

  "Sire, the Hurogmeten has a wizard skilled in healing. Though he could not repair all the damage, the healer's work seems to have hastened my recovery. " She showed him her hands with the nails partially regrown and turned her left hand so he could see the ugly new scar tissue.

  He smiled his rare smile. In all the times he'd called her here, she'd only seen him smile once or twice. "So there is still magic in Hurog. I was told it was so, but I am glad to hear of it. We have need of all the magic we can. "

  "Sire, Ward is not sworn to your cause. " It hurt to make the warning, but it was her duty not to mislead him.

  "I know, Tisala, but Jakoven will take care of that for us - if his killing of Erdrick has not already done so. " He paused. "I rather liked Erdrick, you know. But Ward . . . " Kellen shook his head, eyes lost in the shadows. "Who would have thought that his stupidity was feigned? I knew him before his father ruined him - I would not have though he had a duplicitous bone in his body. "

  "Survivors can't always choose their methods," she said.

  He nodded his head, the smile dying. "I suppose I should have remembered that Ward was the only person I ever met who could beat me at chess . . . Speaking of which, we have a game to finish. "

  Tisala stood up and sat on one end of the bench. Kellen scooted back until his back was against the wall.

  He'd carved a chessboard on the bench with a sharp rock, and from a bag he'd hidden on his person he withdrew finely carved jade and jasper chess pieces. He set them up quickly, remembering the moves that they'd made the last time she'd been there months ago. Rosem had told her that Kellen played chess with a lot of the people who visited him, remembering each game as he did hers. It gave him a hobby, kept him sane.

  They had time for three moves each before Kellen stored the pieces back in his bag.

  "I enjoy playing with an opponent as good as I," he said pensively. "There aren't many who play as well as you. "

  "My father taught me," she reminded him.

  "Yesterday, Rosem said you were here looking for Ward," he said.

  "Yes, sire. "

  "No one I know here has been able to find out where they have him. But there's something going on in the mage's section. Jade Eyes has been here every day, and the archmage as well. "

  "I thought that's where he might be. His wizard can't find him. "

  "Ward is mageborn," said Kellen. "I remember that Ward could find things that were lost. " He stared at the empty board on the bench for a moment. "I'll see if we can't get you into the new section in the next few days. What do you intend to do when you find him?"

  "His wizard thinks he can get Ward out if I can find him. "

  "He'll lose Hurog," said Kellen softly. "If you are not very careful, Lord Duraugh and Beckram will lose their lives over this. I can't afford to lose Hurog - I've been counting on their support. "

  "If you tell me so, sire, I will tell them that I could not discover where he is. " She knew as she said it that she lied - she'd never lied to Kellen before. "If Jakoven holds Ward, Duraugh will support any party that opposes him. "

  Kellen thought of it for a bit but shook his head. "You can't cage an eagle for long without destroying it. Get Ward out. I'll think about how to use this; it will give me something to do. Go ahead and see what you can do to get Ward out. I'll tell Rosem to give you what aid we can. " He gave a nod of his head in dismissal and she bowed and finished mopping the floor while he lay back down on his bench and turned his back to her again.

  After she'd knocked on the door to let the guard know she was finished he said softly, "I liked Ward. "

  "Me, too," she whispered back. And then the guard drew the bar and opened the door.

  "Took you long enough," he said shortly.

  He wasn't supposed to talk to her so she just bowed her head and nodded. It took her five trips to the straw room to cover the entire floor of Kellen's cell with a thick layer of straw. She finished and without a look at the still man on his bench she shut the door and bolted it behind her.

  Tisala stopped at a public bathhouse to strip away the odor of the Asylum before her meeting with Oreg. It was just full dark when she got to the designated tavern, about the time she'd told him to expect; but from the empty mugs in front of him, Oreg had been there for quite some time.

  He took one look at her face and turned away to gulp down the contents of a mug.

  "I'm going back tomorrow," she murmured. "I can get into the mage's wing then. I'll find him. "

  "It's bad," he said, almost to himself. "He's hurting. "

  Tisala felt herself pale. She knew some of the things that went on in the Asylum - but usually they picked their victims carefully from those whose relatives wouldn't care. She'd assumed that Ward, with Lord Duraugh and Beckram awaiting audience with the king, would be safe enough - even with Jade Eye's attention.

  "We'll get him out, Oreg. I promise. "

  He gave her a look and his eyes were far, far older than his face. "You are in no position to promise anything. And I am too old to believe in promises. We will do our best and only the gods know if our best will be enough. Come, Lord Duraugh will be expecting us. "

  "Us?"

  He nodded. "The king is going to make us wait while his 'healers' examine Ward more closely. Lord Duraugh decided to rent a house rather than stay in the allotted rooms in the Residence, since it was made clear that there wasn't enough room for Duraugh's men. We've managed to shed the king's guards and spies. As long as we're careful getting in and out of the house, you should be able to stay there. Lord Duraugh wants to keep on top of this. "

  She'd been staying at Rosem's, but Duraugh's would significantly reduce the risk to Rosem. If someone looked too hard at Rosem, they might realize that the meek man who'd worked at the Asylum for the past decade was Prince Kellen's man, his body servant and guard.

  "Give me the address of Duraugh's house and I'll find it," she said. "I have to stop by and let the people I was staying with know that I've found somewhere else to stay. "

  "Do you want me to accompany you?" he asked.

  She shook her head. "I'd rather go alone. The people I stayed with don't like strangers. "

  He rattled off an address in a genteel district close to the Residence. "There's a park nearby with an oak tree the children climb on. Meet me there and I'll see that you get in unobserved. "

  "It may take me a while," she warned.

  "No matter. Come when you're ready. " He settled their tab with a few coins on the table, then left.

  Rosem's home was a fair walk from the tavern, but when she got there, she continued to walk past it. She had a pilgrimage to make.

  The buildings on the streets grew smaller and less well kept. Businesses were mostly run out of single-room dwellings without public licenses or signs. Here an old woman sold bruised fruit purchased at a discount from a regular merchant, while across the street a younger woman advertised her trade with bared breasts and fluttering eyes.

  Tisala pulled up the hood of her cloak as if she were cold and turned down an alleyway to find the place where she had lived. It had been a small building built behind a narrow two-story house that faced the street. The only way into or out of it had been through the alley, and even then it was easy to miss behind the tall, old stone structure that had once been a part of an outer city wall.

  She stepped behind the wall and stared at the scorched timbers that were all that was left of her home and the people who'd lived there.
She'd sent a message to tell Haverness she was alive, but he wouldn't get it for a few weeks yet.

  Death hung over the blackened ruin.

  She'd lived with nine other people here, mostly actors and whores. They had shared cooking and cleaning - the small chores of living together. Tisala's nose burned and she rubbed it furiously: She would not cry for them. Their deaths would not be a small deed - little remembered - but another crack in the wall that held Jakoven on his throne. Her determination gave her little comfort.

  Cold and depressed, Tisala walked back to Rosem's home, a basement apartment below a chandlery. She opened the door without knocking and found him in front of the tiny fireplace stirring the contents of a pot hanging over the fire.

  "Find your man?" he asked without looking up from his task.

  "No, but he said he'd get me into the mage's section tomorrow. " They didn't use Kellen's name outside the Asylum.

  Rosem nodded. "He enjoys your visits. " He stopped stirring and set his spoon aside. "Do you really think that this mage of yours can get the Hurogmeten out?"

  "He seems to think so," she said.

  "Would he agree to get someone else out, too?"

  Her heart picked up, but she said, "Is this the right time? I thought that we needed to wait until things were properly supported. Wouldn't want the whole structure to fall for want of underpinnings. " Like Kellen's name, the rebellion was only referred to indirectly. Scrying spells could be set to activate at key words - like "Alizon" or "Kellen" - if there were a wizard who wanted to waste so much effort on a poor man who worked as a cleaner at the Asylum.

  "We are supposed to get word when the time is right," she said. Alizon swore he'd tell Rosem as soon as there was any kind of hope for a rebellion against Jakoven.

  "I don't think he'll last much longer in there," said Rosem heavily.

  In all the time she'd known Kellen's man, she had never seen him nervous before, but the blunt-nailed hands that used toweling and pulled the hob out of the fire were shaking. "Until last season I used to get him to wrestle with me, but he won't do that anymore. I don't think he believes he'll ever get out. I think he's just humoring me because he can't bear to hurt me. He's lost more weight, did you notice?"

  She nodded her head. "Ward's man would do it, I think. But he'll need to know what he's getting into. I won't have him unaware of the magnitude of what we want. "

  "Let me meet your wizard," Rosem said.

  "After I get out of the Asylum tomorrow," agreed Tisala. "I'll talk to him. "

  "Just ask him to meet me. Don't say anything else. I want a look at him before I trust him with this. "

  Tisala frowned as she walked. Bringing Oreg into this made her feel uneasy and she thought until she pinned down the cause.

  Oreg liked to bait people. She'd seen him do it with Tosten in particular, because Tosten rose to the occasion. Ward mostly enjoyed it. But if Oreg tried it with Rosem, as uptight as Rosem was now, he would try to kill Oreg.

  Rosem was good with any weapon at hand, but Oreg was a wizard - a dragon.

  Tisala sighed and rubbed her forehead.

  Oreg was waiting by the oak tree in the park when she got there. His face was peaceful in the moonlight, all the signs of stress she'd seen in the tavern were gone as if he'd donned a blank mask.

  "Oreg," she said when she was close enough. She'd decided to approach him here, rather than in Duraugh's house. "My contact at the Asylum wants to meet you tomorrow. "

  "Why does he want to see me?" The wizard's eyes were hidden in the shadows. For a moment she felt a shiver of fear. Around Ward and the other Hurogs, Oreg went out of his way to appear boyish - but she was too skilled a hunter to believe his camouflage.

  "I can't tell you," she said. "But you are free to refuse what he asks. Just don't play games with him. "

  "Play games?" He smiled at her, showing his teeth. "Why would I do something like that. "

  No, she thought wryly, she was not imagining the menace he projected. He wanted her to be afraid. "I care for him and I don't want to lose friends. Rosem doesn't have much of a sense of humor. If he believes you'll betray us, he'll try to do something about it. "

  "You think I'd deliberately mislead him?" His hand came out and touched the rapid pulse on her neck.

  "Yes. " The touch made her lose her temper. "I think you'd enjoy it. You may have everyone else fooled, but I know what you are. "

  "You do," he agreed.

  She waved her hand in dismissal. "Not the dragon part. Ward treats you as if he needs to protect you - just like he treats everyone else. Stala thinks you a bumbling wizard, powerful but shy. And Tosten . . . " She considered a moment. "Tosten's worried you're going to hurt Ward. "

  He'd been watching her complacently until her last statement. "Hurt Ward?"

  She nodded. "He knows that Ward sees you as one of his strays - like me, that young girl with the birthmark across her face, and the little boy with the crippled foot whose father is in the Blue Guard. But he thinks that means that Ward doesn't know what you are, what you're capable of doing. "

  "I'd never hurt Ward," Oreg said, his voice low.

  "I know that," she said. "Tosten does, too now, I think. No one could miss how you felt about Ward when you came to tell us you'd lost him. "

  Oreg took several strides away from her. After a moment he came back, his face and body relaxed once more.

  "So you know me better than anyone?" The threat was back in his voice.

  She raised her chin and smiled coldly at him. "You are a predator - like me. I think you would give your life for those at Hurog - but you care little or nothing for anyone else. " She could feel the menace gathering around her. A chill wind cut through the trees, rustling the old leaves that waited for spring budding to fall. "It worries me to take you to Rosem," she said. "You are too careless with other people. But I want what he wants enough to risk exposing him. "

  He laughed suddenly, sinking bonelessly against the oak tree. "I'll make a deal with you. You find Ward and I'll listen to what this friend of yours has to say. I'll be a sincere, innocent half-mad wizard for you. If" - he held up one finger, "if you don't subject me to any more speeches. "

  She considered him warily. Probably, she thought, there had never been any danger at all. "What if I promise to try not to subject you to speeches? I have a weakness for them, which I'll try to curb in your presence. "

  He grinned at her, showing his teeth. "Let us in to the dragon's lair, then, and let Lord Duraugh know what we know, hmm? He'll be expecting us. "

  She half thought he would work some wizardry that would transport them into the house, but he merely extended his elbow in invitation. When she tucked her arm in his, he patted her hand and let out another snort of laughter.

  "If you think I am so dangerous, why are you so easy with me?"

  She smiled. "Because I am no threat to Ward and you know it. "

  They walked into the alleyway that ran behind the house and through the garden gate. The back door was unlocked, which Oreg corrected as soon as they were through.

  The house was sparsely furnished with good pieces. Tisala let her hand trail over a small table. The house had an impersonal look, as if it hadn't been a home in a very long time.

  Oreg led her silently up the back stairway and down a dimly lit hall. There were several doors, but only one with light shining under it. Oreg stopped there and knocked.

  "Come in," said Ward's uncle, and they did.

  The room had been meant for a library, but books were expensive and the shelves that lined one wall were empty. A few modest but tasteful vases and a smallish carving or two tried to make the room less empty.

  Lord Duraugh and his son, Beckram, were seated before a long table. Beckram looked distinctly relieved to see Oreg and Tisala.

  The warrior who'd traveled from Hurog was gone: Duraugh wore the elegant court clothes like a second skin, and i
t made him look almost effeminate. Beckram, though even more elaborately arrayed in court fashion, wore a leashed purposefulness like a cloak around his shoulders. No one would mistake him for a simple court dandy.

  "Did you find Ward?" asked Duraugh.

  Tisala shook her head. "No. But I found out for certain that he's not in the regular part of the Asylum. Tomorrow my friend will get me into the section built to hold mages. If he's there, I can find him. It's not very big, just a few cells and a laboratory. "

  "They wouldn't need it to be very big," said Beckram. "How many mad sorcerers could there be?"

  "Too many," replied Tisala somberly. "And they all work for the king. "

  "Where's Tosten?" asked Oreg.

  Beckram answered. "He was restless and decided to do some exploring. Since he took his harp with him, I imagine that means he's going tavern hopping. "

  "Oreg told me the king refused to let you see Ward," said Tisala, taking a seat on an empty bench that spanned one wall of the room. She leaned back against the wall and closed her eyes. It had been a long day.

  "The king said he'd heard that Ward had recovered his wits and he wanted an expert opinion before he trusted such an important keep to a boy whose own father thought him to be addled," said Duraugh.

  Beckram snorted.

  The door opened and Tisala opened her eyes to see Ward's brother stroll in, his harp case slung over a shoulder.

  "The king knows Ward is fine," Tosten said, revealing he'd been listening for a while before entering. "Ward followed me to court the last two times I came, worried I was getting myself into trouble. I should never have told him that someone sounded me out - "

  "Sounded you out?" asked Duraugh.

  Tosten nodded and took a seat at the table, setting his case on the floor. "Someone told me Alizon had good things to say about me - it was before Jakoven moved against his brother, so the comment was safe enough. Then he asked me how my cousin was, wasn't it terrible how an assassin killed Erdrick in the king's garden and shouldn't the king be doing something to ensure the safety of his loyal subjects . . . things like that. I sent him away - gently. "

  "Who was it?" asked Beckram.

  Tosten raised his eyebrows but didn't answer. "I sent him away so that I wouldn't have to know any more than I already did. When I told Ward about it, he worried that I was as likely to get attacked by one side as the other. When I wouldn't stay at Hurog, he followed me here. " Tosten's voice tightened, though his expression didn't change. "He knew that flaunting himself in front of the court would force the king to either acknowledge him as Hurogmeten or move to fulfill the writ, and he used it to blackmail me into staying away from court. "

  Duraugh nodded, but said, "Frankly, I'm surprised Jakoven didn't just leave him be. Ward's reputation since the Vorsag king died at Hurog should have made him politically invulnerable. Just how he managed to pull down Hurog around King Kariarn's ears has been a well-kept secret - but everyone knows Ward was responsible. "

  "Maybe he's worried that Ward has already thrown himself in Alizon's camp," said Tisala slowly, sitting up straight. "Jakoven has many ears in court, he might have known that Tosten had been approached. Afterward Tosten goes to Hurog and brings back Ward. Twice. He might think the rebellion is closer to breaking out than it is, and that Ward is a part of it. "

  Beckram shook his head. "Hurog's not that important. It's personal. Jakoven wasn't able to get to me, so he went after Ward instead. "

  Tisala almost held her tongue, but she didn't want them going to court unprepared. "Alizon thinks that all of Shavig will follow Hurog's lead. The king was almost apoplectic when he received his due from last harvest. A number of the Shavig lords included veiled references to Hurog with their tribute. Colwick of Cornen went so far as to sign himself 'Hurog's liegeman. "

  Duraugh nodded. "I heard about that. They're trying to protect Ward, I think, by letting the king know Ward has their support. Shavig hasn't had a hero like Ward since old Seleg, and that was a couple of centuries ago. They don't intend to lose him. "

  Tosten gripped the table with both hands. "So the king thinks Ward's opinion carries Shavig, which is true. " He glared at Beckram. "But he also believes that Ward has already leaned into Alizon's camp - which is probably what will happen eventually. So he has to get Hurog out of Ward's hands. "

  "So," breathed Tisala, terror robbing her of a stronger voice, "he investigates. For the safety of his subjects he calls the Hurogs to court. "

  She looked at the men in the room blindly, as the pieces fell into place. "His wizards will examine Ward. Then he presents you with what his wizards have left. The court will only see that Ward's body is healthy, but you know him. You'll see what the king has done to him even if his body is untouched. Unprepared for Ward's condition, you give Jakoven an excuse to declare you all traitors - he doesn't need much, just a drawn sword or a misspoken word. Then he can set whomever he wishes over Hurog. It would antagonize Shavig - but not unpardonably. A king has the right to defend himself. Shavig loses Ward and Lord Duraugh in one blow and retreats to lick its wounds. Without Ward it is unlikely that the Shavig lords will fight against the king. "

  The Hurog men were all staring at her with various degrees of horror, but it was Oreg who whispered, "What are they doing to Ward?"

  "Until just now," she said, "I thought Jakoven would want to keep Ward in good condition for fear of you acting against him - but that is exactly what he wants. There are bodies carried out of the mage's wing wrapped in canvas and burned. I know the two that I, personally, had the opportunity to see were . . . changed. One man had no face, no skin, no . . . " She had to quit speaking, it was probably for the best anyway, because Oreg's eyes were beginning to glow in the shadows of the library. "And the other?" Tosten's voice was no louder than Oreg's had been.

  "She was dead," Tisala said. "But she still moved. We saw her because the cleaners who were supposed to take her to the crematorium dropped the bundle and ran. She was dead. There was no intelligence in her, but magic allowed her body to move. "

  "I know that spell," said Oreg, who looked as if he wished he didn't. "I thought it had been lost when the last emperor was killed. "

  Lord Duraugh turned to Tisala. "Find Ward tomorrow. Once you have him, we will get him out - one way or the other. If Hurog has to declare rebellion against the king, so be it. "