The Prophet of Panamindorah, Book One Fauns and Filinians (14 page)

Corry fell into step beside him. “Do you
think I could talk to Sham? I want to ask him what I looked like
when I shifted.”

Syrill snorted. “I doubt Chance’s
interrogation will leave him in a chatty mood, Corellian.” He
continued to mutter as they passed to ever lower levels of the
castle. A torch was always kept burning at the entrance to the
dungeons. Syrill took a cold brand from a bracket, lit it, and they
started down the steps. A rat scurried at the edge of their pool of
light, it’s claws hissing over the stone. At last they came to a
metal-banned door with a sentry, who took one look at Syrill and
opened to them.

Corry surveyed the low-ceiling room. The air
held a trace of sewer smells. Meuril and Chance were conversing at
the far end before a huge, cold fireplace. They turned as the door
opened. “Syrill.” Meuril looked him up and down. “Home for a
visit?”

“Where is he?” demanded Syrill.

“In a cell, still unconscious.”

“Fenrah will want revenge.” Syrill glanced at
Chance. “No offense, but this isn’t Laven-lay’s quarrel.”

Meuril shook his head. “Not Laven-lay’s
quarrel? Syrill, they took you hostage just last summer!”

Syrill opened his mouth to argue, but Meuril
held up a hand. “Chance and I have been discussing cliff faun
additions to our defenses.”

As Corry moved closer, he saw Chance’s face
in the torchlight, exultant. He clasped his hands behind his back.
“I am already having the city watched, and more soldiers are
arriving every minute. Laven-lay is safe, Syrill.”

At that moment, the door opened to admit
Laylan. “You asked me to get you when the drug wore off,” he said
to Chance. “He’s awake.”

Behind Laylan, Corry caught site of another
faun, blond like Chance, but perhaps twenty years older. Laylan
withdrew, and Chance moved toward the door. As he turned to leave,
Corry caught the expression he shot towards the newcomer—pure
loathing.

“Jubal!” cried Syrill. “Welcome to Laven-lay.
Perhaps you can give me some specifics on these cliff faun
reinforcements you’re sending us.”

* * * *

When Chance stepped out the door, Laylan was
already partway down the passage. “How long has he been awake?”
asked Chance.

“Less than a quarter watch. He was groggy at
first, hallucinating from the drug.”

“Did he say anything useful while he was
hallucinating?”

Laylan thought of Sham muttering and
twitching in the straw. “They’re coming, they’re coming, they’re
coming.”
He means Shyshax and I,
Laylan had thought,
coming to claim him in the trap.
But then Sham had said,
“Blood in the water, father. The big spotted one is at the window.
He killed Auta. I heard her crunch.”

This is long ago,
thought Laylan,
the fall of Sardor-de-lor to Demitri’s cats. Sham would have
been seven.
“Blood is coming under the door,” whispered Sham.
“Play louder, father. Play louder.”

Useful?
“Not really,” said Laylan to
Chance.

Chance frowned and quickened his pace.

“You won’t get anything out of him,” remarked
Laylan.

“What?”

“Sham won’t tell you where to catch the pack.
Maybe if we’d caught one of the youngsters, but not Sham.”

Chance sneered. “We’ll see.”

They came to a door, guarded by cliff fauns.
Chance reached to open it, but Laylan put his hand on the door. “It
won’t help to torture him.”

The faun’s eyes narrowed. “What’s the matter
with you?”

Laylan shook his head. “I’ve worked as
carefully as you have for this, and I don’t want him spoiled to no
purpose. Set a trap. Use him as bait. She will come.”

Chance jerked the door open.

Laylan sighed. “But you’ve paid for my
trouble, so do as you like.”

Two torches blazed in the cell, making the
shadows jump and twist. The floor might have been stone, but one
would have had to dig some distance to find it. Laylan doubted the
cell had been used in a hundred years. A whip hung from a nail in
one wall. It, at least, looked new.

Laylan found himself thinking of the contrast
to Danda-lay’s dungeon. Chance could have gotten creative there, if
his father had given him loan of the equipment. Danda-lay still had
a few shelts who remembered how to use it.
Some of them have
probably had recent practice.

He saw that the cliff fauns had already been
at work in his absence. Sham was no longer lying in the straw, but
standing in the middle of the room, naked, tied by each hand to a
ring in opposite walls. He held one paw a little off the ground.
The trap had broken his ankle. Sham’s dark hair lay plastered
against his brow, and sweat trickled down his neck from the
unnatural fever brought on by Laylan’s drugged trap. His chin
rested on his chest, and he did not look up when Chance and Laylan
entered.

For a moment Chance stood in front of Sham,
his blue eyes glittering almost red in the torchlight.
He looks
mad as a falcon,
thought Laylan.

“I’ve kept my promise,” said Chance at last,
“I told you I would hang you from the highest scaffold in
Panamindorah.”

Sham raised his head. For a moment he
squinted at Chance as though trying to decide whether he was real.
He licked his dry lips. “What?”

“You will die tomorrow on public display, and
your flayed and gutted corpse will dangle from a spike at the gates
of Port Ory.”

Sham made a hacking sound. For a moment
Laylan thought he was coughing, then realized he was laughing. “A
party?” His voice was growing stronger. “I suppose it’s important
to teach your little ones the higher forms of entertainment, but
I’m trying to remember when you made me this promise.”

Chance’s face twisted. “Standing in the
antechamber of this very castle, the day you took Syrill and a
palace guest hostage, I swore to you—”

“Oh, oh, that.” Sham appeared to consider.
“Strange as it may sound, I was preoccupied at the time. I have no
idea what you said to me.”

Chance struck him backhand across the face.
“I said I would have your pelt,” he hissed, “and hang you from the
highest scaffold in Panamindorah. There will be several thousand
fauns and cats present. If any wolflings appear, we may have more
than one hanging. Two, three...eight.”

“You’ll have only one. If that.”

Chance drew his sword and brought it against
the wolfling’s throat. “Where is she, Sham?”

Sham didn’t flinch. “Where is who?”

Chance struck him again. “Where is Fenrah?
Where is your den? I can make this easy or difficult.”

Sham spat in Chance’s face.

Chance retrieved the whip from the wall and
tossed it to one of the guards. “I will learn what I want to know
if I have to drain the blood from your body.”

Laylan almost covered his eyes.
They have
no idea what they’re doing.
It occurred to him that Chance had
not been allowed to bring any of his father’s experienced
interrogators from Danda-lay—that, or he’d been too proud to ask.
These were foot soldiers who’d served under Chance when he fought
in the cat wars.
They’re accustomed to interrogating cats, not
shelts.

Fortunately, Sham showed them the error of
their ways by passing out before the faun with the whip had really
gotten into his stride. Laylan decided to risk a comment. “Are you
trying to soften him up or kill him?”

Chance glared, but after an inspection of the
prisoner, he told the faun with the whip to hold back a bit. Sham
sagged, his body now slick with blood. As he started to come round,
he instinctively pushed his good foot into the straw, trying to
relieve the pressure on his wrists.

“I’ll give you another opportunity,” said
Chance. “Where is she?”

Sham flicked his tail, sending a shower of
blood droplets onto Chance’s lily white tunic.

Chance scowled. “Whip him again.”

Sham stayed conscious longer this time. The
faun with the whip showed a little restraint. Still, the wolfling
made no sound, and at last he went limp. Laylan wondered how many
days Sham had been without food by now.
Two at least, likely
three, perhaps more.
He was conscious again in seconds.

Chance paced around his prisoner like a tiger
around a snow-bound deer. He ran a finger along Sham’s shoulder
blades and Sham let out a sharp breath. Chance regarded the blood
on his fingers. “What will the Raiders do without their healer?
When they grow weak and take fever? When they are shot or poisoned
or stabbed? How unfortunate that their healer was not wise enough
to keep himself well.”

“They have Talis,” muttered Sham.

“Your apprentice?” asked Chance lightly. “A
fourteen-year-old bitch-pup? Oh, yes, I’m sure they need fear
nothing
in her hands.” He reached down and fingered Sham’s
limp tail. “I would cut off his tail,” he said to Laylan, “if I did
not want to keep the pelt complete. Together with others, it could
make a fine rug.” He was talking to Laylan, but he said it in
Sham’s ear. Sham must have bristled, because Chance looked pleased.
He let go of the tail.

“Where, oh, where? Is it in a tree perhaps?
In a cave? Underwater like a muskrat den? Is it in a town or
city...in the back of some easily-bribed faun’s house? I’ll make
you a deal, Sham. You tell me want I want to know, and I’ll kill
you here and now. Quick. No more pain. No public execution. No
crowds. None of that nasty strangling.”

Sham turned his head to look Chance in the
face. “Why don’t
I
make
you
a deal. Stop this, and
I’ll ask Fenrah not to skin you
before
she kills you.”

Chance circled back in front of his prisoner.
“Now that’s an idea.” He ran the point of his blade lightly across
Sham’s belly.

Sham didn’t move, but the line of his jaw
tightened. “I thought you wanted to keep your promise.”

“Oh, we have shelts who could keep you alive
until noon tomorrow.”

I doubt that,
thought Laylan.
It’s
wolfling medicine that works those kind of miracles.

Chance toyed with his blade just long enough
to be certain the threat would produce no confession. At last he
let his sword drop and moved forward until his face was very close
to Sham’s. “You’re certain you have nothing to tell me? Well then,
I must bid you good evening.” As he said the words, he moved,
holding his sword like a walking stick, and drove it straight
through Sham’s good paw into the ground.

Sham’s face went nearly as pale a Chance’s,
and for the first time he made a sound of pain, somewhere between a
yelp and a sob. The guards winced, and even Laylan stood up
straight from the wall. Sham scratched feebly with his broken foot.
He looked into Chance’s eyes and gritted his teeth. “Go eat deer
dung.”

Chance jerked his sword free and turned to
the soldiers. “Set five guards around this cell tonight. Two inside
and three out. Detail groups of two within hearing distance all the
way to the exit and at every conjunction of the tunnel.”

“Yes, sir,” said the guard with the whip, and
went out.

Laylan caught Chance’s arm. “You’re not going
to leave him that way, are you?”

Chance looked irritated. “Why not? He’ll last
until morning.”

“Maybe. It depends on whether you want him to
walk
to the scaffold.”

“He’ll walk if I say so. Leave him.” Chance
pushed out the door and down the hall.

Laylan followed him out and waited. It wasn’t
long before he heard the click of hooves and saw a pool of
torchlight approaching. “Hello, Syrill.”

Shyshax was with him. This was no accident.
Laylan had asked Shyshax to find Syrill earlier. The iteration,
Corellian, was with them as well.

Syrill strode into the cell and made a brief
inspection. “Gabalon’s teeth, what a mess!”

Syrill poked at the bloody straw. “A waste!
It would take time, planning, perhaps trickery to break Sham. One
night of brutality would never do it. Can Chance possibly not know
that?”

“He does now,” said Laylan.
I think on
some level, he always did.

“The nobility of old Canisaria, perhaps the
finest healer in Panamindorah,” muttered Syrill, “and in
my
dungeon. Well, cut him down. He’s at least not spending the night
like that.”

“Actually,” began the guard at the door,
“Prince Chance ordered—”

Syrill appeared to swell like a small and
angry puffer fish. “Do you presume to give me orders, sirah? I will
see to the protection of my city with my own personnel. If
Prince
Chance has a problem with that, I will be happy to
discuss it with him. You are dismissed. All of you. Get out!”

The cliff fauns looked as though they might
argue, thought better of it, and departed.

In a quieter voice, Syrill said to Laylan,
“Corellian wanted a word with Sham if that’s possible.”

At the moment, it was not. Sham hung limp in
his bonds as Laylan drew a dagger and cut the thongs. Syrill sent
Shyshax for new guards and a list of supplies. Corellian came
forward and helped to catch Sham so that he didn’t hit the floor.
His skin was slippery, the fur below his waist saturated with
blood. Laylan took Sham from Corellian and carried him to the back
wall, the blood soaking uncomfortably through his tunic.

Sham’s eyes fluttered, and Laylan was aware
of Corellian crouching beside him. “Sham, my name is Corry. Do you
remember me?”

For a moment, Laylan thought he didn’t. Then,
suddenly, Sham’s eyes widened. A look that was unmistakably fear
flicked across his face. Laylan was surprised and curious. He’d
never seen that look on Sham, not even in the trap.

Corellian glanced sideways at Laylan. He
seemed uncomfortable. Finally, he focused on Sham. “You saw me
shift,” he said softly. “I need to know what I shifted to.”