Robert Hughes - The Power and the Prophet

“A bogus Dorlyth, yes! Part of a plan to confuse and divide Flayh’s opposition. It was Admon Faye in Dorlyth’s armor!”

Mar-Yilot moaned and closed her eyes in dismay.

“What’s wrong?” Syth demanded anxiously.

“I’ve killed the wrong man!”

Syth stared at her. “You’ve killed Dorlyth? In vengeance for me?”

Mar-Yilot nodded remorsefully. “I ringed him with fire and drove him off a cliff. But that’s what Bainer told me!” she pleaded in self-defense.

Syth looked away, then shook his head and sighed. “Then Flayh’s succeeded after all. Through this lady’s help, I’m no longer among the fallen, but his ruse has felled another who was just as much of a threat.”

Serphimera had been seized by grief. While she’d never met Dorlyth, she felt she knew him, for Pelmen talked of him constantly. Where had Pelmen been during all this?

Mar-Yilot was watching her reactions. “Did you know Dorlyth mod Karis?” the sorceress asked.

She shook her head. “No. But he was a very dear friend of—a very dear friend.”

Recognition swept across Mar-Yilot’s face and her eyes

widened in a stare. “You’re Pelmen’s woman!” she announced.

The words startled Serphimera, and she blushed, but only

for a moment. Then she looked up and met the shaper’s gaze.

“Yes,” Serphimera said. “Yes, I am.”

Mar-Yilot looked at Syth. “I’ve got to go,” she said with a smile and she disappeared.

It took a moment for the two of them to recover. Syth looked at Serphimera and shrugged. “She’s like that,” he explained apologetically. “She’ll be back.”

“I can hardly wait,” Serphimera responded, and she permitted herself a grin.

When life within the High Fortress grew tedious, Tibb honed his dagger. He didn’t speak to anyone. He just sat in a comer with a whetting stone and ground it against his blade. And he watched. He’d gathered quite a store of knowledge about the happenings within this keep just from observation. He shared it with no one. Although he knew many faces, he knew very few names. He made no effort to make friends.

He’d had a friend, once upon a time, and he was loyal. Once he’d kept his vow of vengeance, perhaps he would make another.

At the moment, he sat at the foot of a rarely used staircase. It was rarely used because only those who had been summoned by Flayh ever ascended it, and the powershaper himself never came down. Admon Faye had set him to guard it while he went up to talk to the master. That wasn’t necessary—everyone in the castle knew the shaper had some mysterious means of guarding himself. But the ugly slaver had positioned Tibb here just the same—rather like a man leaving his dog at the door.

Tibb sneered into the gloom that pervaded this corridor and reviewed his situation. For some reason, Admon Faye had made him a sidekick—literally so, for when the slaver needed someone to kick, that someone was always Tibb. If he needed a shirt to wipe his bloody hands on, that shirt would be Tibb’s.

When he needed a butt for his joke, that butt was Tibb. Whenever the slaver’s bitterness and bile and hatred of life welled up inside of him and spilled over in violence, Tibb was conveniently near. The little man always protected himself from the blows, but he never lost his temper. He absorbed the vilest curses without blinking. He never complained. At times, it almost seemed that Admon Faye actually liked him, for he had protected the little man on occasion from the bullying of other brigands. But Tibb rather suspected that this was really because the slaver considered him a kind of private stock. Tibb was his pet—a miniature terrier whose toughness amused him. No one could abuse Tibb but himself.

Tibb never argued with Admon Faye’s commands. He just kept sharpening his dagger, waiting for the day…

A heavy boot rammed into his backside, lifting him from the bottom stair and landing him on the corridor floor. He didn’t need to look to see who’d done it. To his knowledge, the powershaper didn’t go around kicking people. Admon Faye always did.

“Some guard,” the slaver snorted.

Tibb looked up at him blandly and said nothing. He stooped to pick up his dagger and his whetstone.

“Still working on that dagger, I see.” Admon Faye chortled. “You’re no warrior, little sneak. A warrior sharpens his great sword. Whose back do you plan to stick that into?”

“Yours,” Tibb answered without hesitation.

Admon Faye threw back his head and laughed uproariously. When he finally managed to control himself he wiped his eyes and chuckled. “I’d thought it was something like that. Ah, little sneak, I am so grateful you’re here. Life in this fortress would be unrelieved boredom without your clowning.”

“I’m telling the truth,” Tibb intoned.

“I know!” Admon Faye cackled. “That’s what makes it such a scream! Vengeance, isn’t it? Because your bungling friend managed to get himself killed in the battle under the Imperial House?”

“You abandoned us—”

“Ha!” Admon Faye hooted, genuinely amused. “You make it sound like I was your mother!”

“We thought you were our leader.”

“So now you’re going to knife me in the back.”

“Not now” Tibb responded quietly, setting off another fit of giggles in the hideous slaver.

“Not now? Come now, Tibb! Not ever! I’ve given you one chance after another just to see if you had the courage to make such a move! Oh, that dagger’s sharp all right, but it stays in your scabbard. And it will stay in your scabbard, until you’ve filed it down to a nub! You’ll never kill me. Do you want to know why? Because hating me is all that gives your life meaning!” Admon Faye finished with a triumphant grin.

Tibb gazed up at him. “I will kill you. I’m just waiting for the proper time.”

“The proper time!” Admon Faye snickered. “And when will that be?”

“When it costs you something important. I want it to really hurt.”

Admon Faye’s eyes lidded dangerously. “I’ll bet you do.”

He looked away, as if bored with this threatening banter and remembering something that needed doing. “Come on. We’ve got to collect the rest of the lads and go wait down the hall.”

“Wait for what?” Tibb asked.

“It seems Lord Flayh has allowed an intruder to penetrate this castle, and he wants us to get out of the way so the fellow can go right to his door.”

“How does he know?” Tibb frowned. Admon Faye shrugged expansively, then gave Tibb his brightest, most grotesque smile. “Come on, little sneak,” he said, slipping his long arm affectionately around Tibb’s shoulders. “Let’s go play a game of darts. Maybe you’ll get lucky and plant one between my eyes!” He hustled Tibb down the corridor, laughing all the way.

Tibb said nothing. A few minutes later they were indeed playing a game of darts. But he never did get a chance to aim one at Admon Faye. Just as he was about to take his turn, they heard a war cry from the tower above.

Hundreds of feet above the surface of the lake, Rosha found an open window. He slipped his fingers carefully over the sill and pulled his head up to peer inside it. He saw no one. He quietly drew himself up until his upper body was level with the sill, then threw his legs over it and stepped into the castle. His heart pounded. He expected a troop of warriors to pounce upon him. None did. After resting a few moments from his long climb up from the crevice, he felt an enormous flood of confidence washing through him, sending fresh energy to every muscle.

He had done the impossible. For this, his name would be sung in the taverns of the Mar long after his bones had rotted to dust. But there was a question in his mind. It all seemed too easy. Of course, no one would be expecting someone to try to enter the castle from the rear, so he did have the element of surprise. Even so, it seemed that if Flayh was half the shaper he was rumored to be, then penetrating his fortress would be unthinkable. Rosha wondered if the man had been overrated. True, Pelmen had spoken of his immense power, but Pelmen always gave his enemies more than their due. And no less a shaper than the Autumn Lady herself had dismissed Flayh as a money-counting cloth seller. Rosha’s contempt for the man grew.