Days Of Light And Shadow (16 page)

Chapter Twenty Four.

“High Lord!” Y’aris rushed in to the high lord’s private chambers in a fluster, calling for him urgently. Of course he wasn’t actually in a fluster. It was all perfectly rehearsed. An act. But the boy was too stupid to realise. And in sooth too much enamoured of his creature comforts to care.

His quarters, really his old family home where he and his sister had lived until recently, was far too well appointed in Y’aris’ view. Too large too, especially for one man. It had been too large even when the family had been complete. But then it had to hold a small army of servants. Some of them just to clean and polish the beautiful wooden walls, and of course the gallery of paintings adorning them.

They were portraits for the most part. The artists’ likenesses of his family extending back for centuries. And they were everywhere. Surely it couldn’t be easy to eat your breakfast with a century of disapproving ancestors looking down on you. Or relax in the endless soft furnishings while hundreds of members of House Vora from the past watched your every move. Y’aris didn’t like even entering the house because of them. Somehow he kept imagining that those long dead faces saw all his designs. That they knew what he’d done to House Vora. And what he was going to do.

When he was king, Y’aris would burn those portraits. And he would take the house too. After all it would be empty. There would be no House Vora remaining by the time he was through with them. But he would fill it with his own family. A bevy of fine elven maidens to become his wives. It was time that that ancient custom was returned, and the king had his proper count of wives to raise his heirs. It was time that Elaris had a king.

Y’aris had been forced to deny himself a wife thus far. He could not risk his secrets becoming known. And besides, until he had finally been appointed as high commander, his status had been such that he could not have been considered as a worthy suitor for a maiden of one of the great houses. But times were changing quickly and soon it would not be him that had to prove his worthiness for a spouse. They would have to fall before him. In their droves.

The modesty of just one wife in a high lord appalled him. Even the title of high lord appalled him. A king should be a king. He should be proud of it. And his people should be proud of him too. They should know that he was above them in all ways. That he was more than just a man.

But those were dreams, and for the moment he had to deal with the more practical problems in making them real.

“What is it Y’aris?” Finell was sitting down to his dinner, a platter of fresh salmon on rice expertly prepared by his chef, and he didn’t seem pleased to see him. But that was fine. The more he was displeased he was the easier it would be for Y’aris to make him believe his sorry tale of utra treachery.

“Terrible news High Lord. Terrible news.” Y’aris glanced at him and then at the maid holding a jug of wine, waiting to refill his goblet, and let a smatter of doubt cross his face, as if wondering if she should be there. It was enough of a hint, and Finell waved her away with an annoyed flick of his fingers. He liked his wine Y’aris suspected. Perhaps a little more than was proper. And he liked being served too.

The maid curtsied to Finell and then quickly left the room, shutting the door behind her. She was well enough trained to know not to listen. But then she was low born, not of mixed blood. Not suitable for a wife perhaps, but still suitable to serve. Once she was gone it was time for Y’aris to tell his sorry tale, and he launched in to it with well practiced urgency.

“The humans, they have crossed into Elaris. A huge army with hundreds upon hundreds of cannon, and ten thousand cavalry at least. They crossed during the night, seeking to catch the people of Whitefern unready.”

They hadn’t of course, not yet. The utra’s dragoons were busy sweeping east and west across the southern lands, seeking out his smaller forces and crushing them one by one. Throwing his plans of conquest into disarray. He hated them for that. But still it was only a matter of time before they invaded Elaris and Whitefern would be their likely first conquest. So he wasn’t really lying for once, just speaking a little ahead of the facts.

“My watchmen, they had a training camp just north of Whitefern, three thousand strong. But most of them were not yet trained and they were heavily outnumbered. The utra fell upon them, slaughtered them like animals. Those accursed cannon shredded them in their hundreds and thousands, and then they butchered the injured. The survivors number only fifty.”

“Three thousand dead?” Finell stared at him in horror, as if he’d said three million. As if the utra armies were already at Leafshade’s gates. No doubt after the pigeon he’d received that morning from King Herrick advising him of his soon to be death at the hands of the rats, he was feeling a little at risk.

Of course it wasn’t actually the message Herrick had ordered be sent by their mission. The high lord had no idea that since Y’aris’ men had taken over the city’s roosts, he made sure to receive all messages for him first, and then decided what he wanted Finell to read. He was getting quite good at forging Herodan’s cursive, and long ago had had a second seal made up for the Tendarin Mission. And though it was probably wrong, some days Y’aris wrote completely fake messages just for the pleasure of watching Finell’s face wrinkle up in anger as he was insulted by the king.

But it was also useful as well as enjoyable, and that very morning as Finell had read the lengthy pile of slurs of his name, and of course the obligatory threats, he’d also learned that the humans could wheel their cannon and bring them with their armies. That useful little scrap of information he had planted would prove to be useful in Y’aris’ plans, as it gave him a scapegoat to explain their early defeat. A scapegoat that would once more damage House Vora and distance the high lord from his own family. Even in defeat he could win. All he had to do until then was keep feeding Finell more tall tales about how the watchmen were being cut down by the terrible utra cannon, and watch him squirm.

“Whitefern? They are moving on Whitefern?”

“It seems so High Lord. King Herrick has taken the news of his envoy’s arrest personally, and has used it as an excuse to start his war. I have sent many brave watchmen to worry them and slow their progress, but they are no match for so many soldiers and their accursed cannon. I fear thousands more will die carrying out this heroic duty.” Thousands more deaths he didn’t have to explain as daily the death toll mounted, even if it was all in his head. In ten days every watchman who had died on the march to West Hold would become a hero who had fallen defending Whitefern. The high lord had no idea, and no more did the people of Leafshade who got the news from him. And of course the more that died the more he could recruit, as the high lord grew ever more desperate. Soon there would be a conscription and his losses would be as nothing.

“Then send more!” Finell suddenly screeched at him, his voice filled with panic, and Y’aris tried not to smile. Obviously the high lord could feel those vermin nibbling at his soft skin already. When he’d read what Herrick had said he’d kept that threat. If nothing else it kept the high lord in a state of perpetual anxiety. He was easier to control that way.

“Yes High Lord. I will do so at once.”

Y’aris bowed low and quickly backed out of the chamber, realising that Finell had just handed him a new opportunity. Another chance to explain the terrible losses experienced by his army even more quickly. Within ten days all thirty five thousand dead would be heroes, defending Whitefern from an unprovoked attack, all at the behest of a panicking High Lord. And soon after he would have his conscription for the same reason.

Whether they won or lost, he would be the hero and Finell the incompetent who had given the foolish commands. The Heartwood Throne was almost within his grasp.

As he ran from the high lord’s quarters, supposedly to carry out his bidding in the face of a terrible crisis, Y’aris couldn’t help but smile.

Chapter Twenty Five.

The whip cracked a few more times and each time it found its mark in Iros’ flesh. Be it his chest, his back, his buttocks or his legs, the inquisitor never missed. It was a skill he and his peers had obviously practiced over the years. Years when their services should not have been needed. Years when people such as him should not have even existed. Torture was a violation of the ancient codes.

But despite the inquisitor’s skill, the sting was less than that of a bee. And it faded fast.

It should have hurt. He knew that. But the pain was receding, as was everything else, and instead of crying out as the whip tore more strips off his back, he just hung in his chains and let it pass. He’d been doing that a lot of late.

His inquisitor didn’t seem to like it though. And whenever he started fading, he found new and ingenious ways to wake him up. Pulling his fingernails out with forceps had been the last such method, and he had to admit it had worked, for a time. So had the branding with the red hot poker before that, and he remembered crying out at the time. He had cried out too when they had used those burning brands on the soft parts of his feet. But the pain went away. It always did. No doubt he would have a new torture for him shortly.

And more salt water of course. It wasn’t just to hurt him that they threw buckets of brine over him after each session. It was because the salt slowed the demons of disease in their work. And they wanted him to live as long he could. Because they wanted him to suffer as much as he could.

Still, after however many days or weeks he’d spent in this foul place though, he knew it would hurt less than before. Every day was the same. The pain a little less than the day before, the reaper a little nearer.

He hadn’t been so meek at the start. Then he’d been angry. Laughing at his tormentor, screaming with rage as he was beaten and whipped again and again. It was an outrage. It was a crime. And it would not go unpunished. He had threatened Y’aris’ grey cloaked inquisitors with everything from the loss of their jobs to imprisonment and beheading. It hadn’t helped. He had laughed at them, his rage and anger somehow letting him ignore the pain. That hadn’t helped either. They just continued their work, obeying their orders, their masked faces revealing nothing.

Then after a few days maybe, he’d switched to pleading, telling them again and again that he knew nothing, figuring that he needed to do something to stop the pain. And by then it was continuous. His back was on fire, his front too. He bled from every part of his body. He stank too. They had whipped all of him and the wounds had festered. But it hadn’t helped, and he had soon turned back to the rage.

Since then his moods had wavered. Between anger and fear. Between threatening and begging. And sometimes mocking. But he told them nothing and never did the beatings stop. It was as if it was some sort of game for them. Beat him and beat him and beat him until he said something, reacted in some way, and then when he’d recovered sufficiently start again.

In his darker moments he wondered if they even cared what he said. Often they didn’t even bother asking him questions any more. And when they did they didn’t seem to care about the answers. Maybe they already knew the truth. Maybe they always had. Maybe this was all merely some sick game.

“Where are the supply lines? Where are your soldiers, human?” The inquisitor almost sneered as he added the last, but that was nothing new to Iros. Nor was the fact that he had no particular intention of answering him. For two reasons.

The first was that he actually had no idea, so couldn’t tell the inquisitor anything. He didn’t have any soldiers. All the beatings and burnings, the flaying alive, couldn’t change that simple fact. And the second was that after so long being whipped and beaten and tortured, he simply didn’t care any more. He had finally reached that place where things were starting to seem almost pleasant again.

The touch of the whip no longer stung as it once had. The inquisitor’s words were becoming less harsh and somehow more musical once again. And even the chill of the wind whistling through the rocks wasn’t bothering him any longer. Instead he was listening to the strange music that seemed to float in the gentle breeze, seeing coloured lights as the fairies danced all around, just out of reach, and generally thinking foolish thoughts, daydreams.

A part of him knew that that was probably a bad sign. That the pain and the blood loss were seriously damaging him. That the demons of fever and corruption attacking his flesh, had started winning some sort of victory, but as he hung in his chains he didn’t really care any longer. It would have been better though if he couldn’t have smelled the odour of blood and piss, and unwashed bodies. For some reason that still bothered him.

He could live with the smell of mould on the stone walls. It no longer troubled him when the water from the trees above this primitive mountain of stones that had become a prison ran down the walls. In fact when it reached him as he lay on the cold stones, he drank it. The cries of the other prisoners as they suffered as he did, no longer disturbed him. But the smell of his own blood and piss still lingered in his senses.

“Filthy utra!” The inquisitor let his whip sing once more as he unleashed his anger on his flesh, and while he flinched a little under its bite, Iros didn’t completely know why. It was as though his body was reacting, but his soul had moved somewhere beyond. After so many days and nights, he welcomed that. He welcomed the darkness beyond it. And soon he knew, there would be only darkness. Soft, comforting, welcoming darkness.

So as the whip bit and tore at him, ripping off ever more strips of his flesh, and the inquisitor kept up his endless barrage of questions and insults, Iros laughed at him, amused by his inability to hurt him any longer. He called him names. All while he waited calmly for the darkness to come.

Soon even his flesh stopped flinching.