Dave Duncan - Mother of Lies

They talked briefly of old times and longer of newer, harder times. They discussed the possibility that the Queen of Shadows was a Chosen. Tranquility explained why she had come.

His first reaction was incredulity. “But the boy is a hostage, you say? No one treats hostages like that!” He spoke in painful whispers.

“Saltaja will. Who will ever carry word back to his father and what could he do about it if he knew? I overheard her threats and I swear that she meant them.”

“But, Witness…” The old man shook his head in dismay, and his jowls flapped. “You know that our goddess will never restore missing parts. If the boy is mutilated, we could halt the bleeding and heal the wounds, at some cost to ourselves, but we can never replace what has been lost.”

He gestured with a cruelly misshapen hand. Tranquility had heard about that hand many times, how a block of marble had fallen on a young stonemason, crippling him when his wife was great with their first child and leaving them facing starvation. Such a patient could pay no fee, but Ferganfar had entreated Sinura for him anyway. The goddess had restored the stonemason’s hand, but the Healer had never recovered all the function in his. There were many similar stories about him.

“Your sympathy does you great credit,” he said, “and I agree the woman is evil personified. If she really goes so far as castration… the Healer would have to be male, and even the elderly hesitate to treat such injuries.”

“The boy is terminally stupid,” she admitted. “His courage is rank insanity. What are the chances that he will die of shock and loss of blood?”

“That is quite likely. The slavers do not bring their victims to us to save, because the gifts we should require of them in return would be worth far more than the slave. Even if he survives the first day or two, the wound may well become poisoned.”

She told him about seasoning.

He was shocked, but he believed her. “You think this child is destined to overthrow the bloodlord’s tyranny?”

“You know we never prophesy. Seasoning is only a warning that one day the world may either curse or celebrate his name-provided he lives long enough. Knowing Dantio as I do, I am convinced his fame will not be notoriety like that woman’s.”

The Healer took a while to think. Then he heaved himself painfully to his feet. “We must see that he survives the ordeal. Where is he now?”

Dantio was delivered bound to the palace and taken before Saltaja, who struck him, hurling him to the floor. “Fool!” she said. “You were warned. You know I never make a vain threat, so you’ve forced me to do this. It is your own fault. Take him away.”

He was handed over to the waiting slavers. They marched him out and led him on a tether down to Blackstaur, where slavers’ barns were confined between dyers’, tanners’, abattoirs, and other malodorous premises.

Tranquility watched it all from the nearest Sinurist sanctuary, which was on Handily, two islands away. Although not as grand as the Broom Creek temple where the rich went for treatment, it was still a very splendid timbered hall, overshadowing the stores and tenements around it. It even had a small park of its own, and there she sat on a bench, feeling very untranquil indeed.

Her sight was barred from the interior of the consecrated building, but years earlier, in Nuthervale, she had broken an ankle and experienced Sinurist ritual firsthand. The Healer had bound her injured limb to his own healthy one; then he and his helpers had chanted prayers to the goddess. Tranquility had walked away with barely a limp, while the Sinurist was carried off on a litter. He had recovered in a couple of days, much faster than his patient would have done without help, but the Healers’ mystery demanded true dedication.

Tranquility saw Dantio being carried screaming into the squalid little courtyard where the slavers did their butchery. She watched two men lash him to a grating and a third pump bellows at the furnace. While the monsters were waiting for their implements to become hot enough, a team of three white-clad stretcher bearers arrived, announcing that they had been sent to make sure the hostage survived the operation. The sanctuary had sent them, but the slavers assumed that the palace was keeping an eye on its property.

A brown-robed woman sat down beside Tranquility and clasped her wrist with a cool hand. “Try not to worry, honored lady. You will only give the Healers more work to do.”

She was a Mercy. Nulists hung around the Healers’ sanctuaries, providing their goddess’s comfort to those in distress, and her influence calmed Tranquility’s pounding heart. Because she was not dressed as a Witness, the Mercy misunderstood Tranquility’s presence there and urged her to talk about her husband? son? daughter? and what malady had brought him? her? to the temple of healing? Tranquility’s resisted the babble of questions, but was sufficiently distracted that she missed seeing Dantio actually being mutilated. When she forced her sight back to Blackstaur, he had already gone.

The healers-all large and powerful men-had not even bothered to put him on their stretcher. Instead, the largest was running flat out, carrying Dantio wrapped in a sheet. The other two were racing ahead, ringing hand-bells and clearing a path through the crowds by brute force when necessary. Tranquility shook off the Mercy’s grip and leaped to her feet. Before she reached the sanctuary door, a novice opened it and Ferganfar came limping out, began to say something, and saw the answer already in her face.

“Where?”

“Just crossing Nig.”

“They will be here very soon then. We are ready.”

Shouts and bell clamor announced the healers’ approach, and in moments they came racing along the street. The sanctuary door swung open to receive them, but as they plunged into the dimness within and vanished from Tranquility’s sight, she began to weep.

The Mercy embraced her. “You must not give up hope, dear. The goddess is very merciful. The powers of Her Healers are boundless.”

But they did not include resurrection. Not only Tranquility-every Witness in Skjar had seen that the seasoner was not breathing, that the bloodstained bundle the big man had brought contained a lifeless corpse. Tranquility sobbed for a long time, despite the Mercy’s continuing comfort. When, at last, an elderly Healer came looking for her, it was not Ferganfar. He thanked the Nulist and led the Witness inside.

He took her through to one of the treatment rooms, and there, sitting on a bloodstained bed, clutching a steaming beaker in both hands, sat a very pale and subdued, brown-skinned boy. He had no tops to his ears. He stared up at her with wide dark eyes.

“But he was dead!” she whispered.

“Perhaps not quite dead,” the Healer said softly. “Or perhaps She made an exception for Her dearly loved servant, Ferganfar.”

Tranquility looked up at him in alarm. “How is…?”

The man shook his head. “We urged him not to make the attempt. We all insisted it was too late. He knew. As I said, holy Sinura loved him very dearly, or She would not have granted his prayers in this instance.”

Or else the gods loved Dantio even more.

Later the chief slaver came looking for the palace’s boy and was told he had been dead when he arrived. Justifiably apprehensive, the man went and reported to Saltaja, who ordered him flogged to the doorknocker of death for carelessness. She made Eide question a Witness, who confirmed what the slaver had said: Dantio had died.

By that time he and Tranquility were at sea.

No one pursued them or came looking for them. The voyage to Bergashamm never took less than two sixdays and she spun it out to two thirties, dallying at sun-dried fishing ports around the coast. Dantio soon recovered from his ordeal. With the resilience and ignorance of youth, he was more annoyed by the mutilation of his ears than worried over what else he had lost.