Arrow's Fall (28 page)

As from a century distant she recalled Alberich discussing some of the more unpleasant realities of becoming a Herald with a small knot of final-year students in which she was included.

“The possibility of torture,” Alberich had said on that long ago afternoon, “is something we cannot afford to ignore. No matter what it is that the stories say, anyone can be broken by pain. There are mental exercises that will enable one to escape, but they are not proof against the worst that man can devise. All I can advise you if you find yourself in the hopeless situation is that you must lie; lie so often and with such creativity that your captors will not know the truth when they hear it. For the time will come when you will tell them the truth—you will be unable to help yourself. But by then, I hope, you will have muddied the waters past any hope of clarity. . . .”

But Ancar did not want information; he was getting that in plenty from Orthallen. All he wanted was to make her hurt. She was damned if she’d give him satisfaction before she had to.

So the “fascinating things” failed to drive a sound from her, and the Prince was displeased.

He proceeded to more sophisticated tortures, involving complicated apparatus. He handled all of this himself, his long hands caressing the bloodstained straps and cruel metal as he described in loving detail what each was to do to her helpless body.

Talia did her best to keep herself shielded, and to retreat behind those mental barriers to pain and the outside world she had long ago learned to erect, but as he continued his entertainment, her barriers and shielding gradually eroded. She became nauseatingly aware of every emotion he, Hulda, and the nameless magician were experiencing. The intensely sexual pleasure he derived from her pain was worse than rape; and she was in too much agony to block it out. Hulda’s pleasure was as perverted, and as hard to bear. In fact, both of them were erotically aroused to a fever-pitch by what they were doing to her, and were a scant step from tearing the clothing from each other’s backs and consummating their passion there and then.

Twice she tried to turn her agony back on him, but the magician always shielded him. The magician was deriving nearly as much enjoyment from this as Ancar and his “dear nurse” were, and Talia wished passionately (while she was still thinking coherently enough to wish) to be able to strike out at all of them.

After a time, she was no longer capable of anything but screaming.

When they crushed her feet, she was not even capable of that.

They dragged her back to her cell when her voice was gone, for the Prince did not derive half the pleasure from her torture when she could not respond to his experiments. He stood over her, gloating, as she lay unable to move on the straw where they’d left her.

“So, child, you must rest, and recover, so that we can play my games again,” he crooned. “Perhaps I will tire of the game soon; perhaps not. No matter. Think on tomorrow—and think on this. When I tire of you, I shall still find a use for you. First my men will again take their pleasure of you, for they shall not mind that you are no longer as attractive as you once were; some of them would find your appearance as stimulating as
I
do, my dear. Then you shall be my messenger. How will your beloved Queen react to receiving her favorite Herald, but a small piece at a time?”

He laughed, and swept out with Hulda at his side, already fondling one of her breasts as the door thudded shut behind him.

It took every last bit of her will, but she remained where she was until it was dark, dark enough that she knew that no one would be able to see what she was doing. She rolled to one side then, pushed aside the straw, and uncovered the place where she’d buried her precious bottle of argonel. It had been the knowledge that she had it that was all that had sustained her this day, and she prayed that they had not searched the cell and found it. .They hadn’t.

She kept her mind fastened on each tiny movement, knowing that otherwise she would never be able to continue.

Her fingers were so swollen as to be all but useless, but she had anticipated that. She managed to scrape back the loosely-packed dirt with the sides of her hands, clearing away enough so that she could get her teeth around the neck and pull the bottle out of the hole that way.

The effort nearly caused her to black out and left her gasping and weeping with pain, unable to stir for long moments. When she could move again, she braced the bottle between wrists rubbed raw and pulled the stopper out with her teeth.

She lay for a long, long moment again, while her mind threatened to retreat into blackness. That would only be a temporary escape, and she needed a permanent one.

She spat the stopper out and rolled onto her side while her body howled in anguish, and poured the entire bottle into her mouth. It burned all the way down her raw throat, and burned in her stomach where it lay like molten lead. It felt as if it were eating a hole through to the outside.

She wept with pain, conscious of nothing but pain, for what seemed to be an eternity. But then numbness began to spread from the fire, pushing the pain before it. It spread faster as it moved outward, and soon she could no longer feel anything, anything at all. Her mind seemed to be floating in warm, dark water.

A few thoughts remained with her for a while. Elspeth; she hoped the child really had forgiven her—she hoped the next Queen’s Own would love her as much as Talia did. And Dirk. Perhaps it was the best thing that he should
not
know how much she loved him; he would be spared much anguish that way. Wouldn’t he? She was glad of one thing; that he and Kris had made up before they’d left. It was going to hurt him badly enough when he learned of Kris’ death as it was.

If only she’d been able to tell them—if only she’d known for certain about Orthallen.
He
still was there, the unsuspected enemy, waiting to try yet again. And Ancar— master of magicians and possessed of an army of killers. If only she could tell them somehow. . . .

While she still had the strength and the will, she tried again to Mindcall, but was foiled by the mage-barrier.

Then her will went numb, and all she could do was drift,

It was odd . . . Bards always claimed that alt the answers came when one died, but there were no answers for her. Only questions, unanswered questions, and unfinished business. Why were there no answers? One would think that at least one would know
why
one had to die.

Maybe it didn’t matter.

Kris had said it was bright. The tales all said the Havens were bright. But it wasn’t bright. It was dark— darkness all around, and never a hint of brightness.

And so lonely! She would have welcomed anything, even a fever-dream.

But perhaps that was just as well, too. In the darkness that damned magician couldn’t find her to bring her back. If she fled away far enough, he might get tost in trying to find her. It was worth the effort—and the warm, numbing darkness was very soothing, if the loneliness could be ignored.

Perhaps elsewhere, where the mage couldn’t follow, she would find the Havens . . . and there would be light.

She let the darkness pull her farther along, closing behind her, and thoughts began to numb and fall away as well.

As she retreated away down into the darkness, her very last thought was to wonder why there still was no hght at all, even at the end of it.

When the Queen and her entourage set out at last, Dirk was part of her honorguard despite the vehement protests of Healers and fellow Heralds that he was not well enough for such an expedition.

He had responded that he was needed. This was true; the Collegium had suspended classes and all Heralds normally teaching were serving as bodyguards, with the sole exceptions being those too sick or old to travel. He also argued that he was far healthier than he looked (which was not true), and that he would rest just as well at the easy pace of the baggage train as he would fretting in the infirmary (which was marginally true). The Healers threw up their hands in disgust when Selenay agreed to his presence, and pronounced her to be insane and him to be the worst patient they had ever had since Keren.

He knew very well that Teren and Skif had quietly debated themselves to keep an eye on him, not trusting te protestations of health in the slightest. He didn’t care,
anything
was worth not being left behind—even being over.

He was right about the leisurely quality of the journey
—
this was to be an easy trip; the most exciting likely to occur would be when they met Talia or at the Border. The bodyguard of Heralds was more of tradition than suspected danger. After all, Alessandar was a trusted ally and a firm friend of Valdemar, and it was as likely for harm to come to her and Elspeth in her own capital as it was for them to come to harm in Hardorn. Dirk figured he should be as safe with them as in his own bed.

There were other reasons why Dirk wanted to accompany the others, although none that he was willing to disclose to anyone else. His enforced idleness had given him ample time for thought, and he was beginning to wonder if he hadn’t made a bad mistake in his assumptions about the relationship between Talia and Kris. While he hadn’t precisely left the field clear, Kris hadn’t spent much (if any!) time alone with her since they’d returned. Instead, he’d had a brief fling with Nessa, then returned to his old semi-monastic habits. Nor had Talia sought him out. He knew these things to be facts, since he’d been keeping track of their whereabouts rather obsessively. Now that he thought back on it, Kris’ frequent paeans of praise for the Queen’s Own seemed less like those of a lover lauding his beloved, and more like a horsetrader trying to convince a reluctant buyer! And the one whose company Talia
had
been seeking was the one person who had been trying to avoid her—himself.

Then there was that odd incident with Keren, right after he’d damn near collapsed. She’d bullied her way past the Healers the morning Kris and Talia had left, while he was still fairly light-headed with fever, and had delivered a vehement lecture to him that he couldn’t quite remember. It was maddening, because he had the shrewd notion that it was important, and he couldn’t quite bring himself to confront Keren again and ask her what her diatribe had been all about. But if what vague memories he
did
have were not totally misleading—and they very well could be—she’d spoken of lifebonds, and more than once. And she’d gone on at some length about what an idiot he was being, and how miserable he was making Talia feel.

Besides all that, he had had some very frightening dreams that he didn’t think could all be laid to the fever, and had been entertaining very uneasy feelings about the whole expedition from the moment he had learned that Talia and Kris were gone. If something were to go wrong, he wanted to know about it firsthand. And he wanted to be in a position where he could do something, not just wonder what was happening; although in the kind of shape he was in, he was not too sanguine that he’d be able to do much.

Technically, he was still an invalid, so he was sent to the rear of the company before the baggage animals, to share Skifs bodyguard duty on Elspeth. Skifs Cymry had foaled in early spring, and the youngster was just barely old enough to make this kind of easy trip.

Elspeth was anxious, and Dirk had a notion that he and Skif were the best possible company for the young Heir; the antics of Cymry’s offspring and Skifs easy patter kept her spirits up, and Dirk was more than willing to talk about the one subject that overwhelmed her with guilt and dominated her thoughts—Talia.

Selenay had given Talia’s note to Elspeth when the Heir had searched for the Queen’s Own without success and had finally demanded to know what her mother had done with her. She had recalled her promise of many years’ standing with heartfelt remorse almost as soon as Talia had turned her back on her and ridden away. “I’ll never get mad at you,” she had pledged. “No matter what you say, unless I go away and think about it, and decide what you told me just wasn’t true.”

And a great deal of what Talia had said that night, though harsh,
was
true. She hadn’t thought past her own pleasure and her own wishes. She hadn’t once considered her “affair” in the light of the larger view.

Her would-be lover’s betrayal had hurt—but not nearly so much as the thought that she’d driven away a friend who truly loved her with that broken promise. Talia’s words had been ugly, but not unearned—and Elspeth had returned her own share of harsh and ugly words. If truth were to be told, though Elspeth was even more ashamed when she thought about it, the name-calling bad begun with her. She wanted desperately, now that she’d read the note, to make her own apologies and explanations, and to regain the closeness they’d had had before Talia’s stint in the field. Her remorse was very real, and she had the urge to talk about it incessantly. She found a sympathetic ear in Dirk, who never seemed to find her own repetitive litany boring.

She gradually managed to purge some of her guilt just by pouring her unhappiness into his ears, and slowly it became less obsessive.

But it was still very much with her.

“Daydreaming, young milady?”

The smooth, cultivated voice startled Elspeth out of deep thought.

“Not daydreaming,” she corrected Lord Orthallen, just a shade stiffly. “Thinking.”

He raised an inquisitive eyebrow, but she wasn’t about to enlighten him.