Dave Duncan - Mother of Lies

The Dantio one was a temptation, though. How had the Witnesses managed to deceive her for so long? He had not died in Skjar that day, but he must have gone to the slavers’, because the tops of his ears were missing. “Stand!” she said, and he was on his feet, facing her, but blank, unaware of her. The rest of the vision had gone, there was only him. Yes, she could remember that soft, unformed face. She willed away his covering and confirmed that he had been emasculated, too, as she had ordered.

“Turn!”

He turned his back. She smiled at the scars, recalling how he had screamed and begged for mercy when he was being flogged. But the familiarity was more than that.

“Look at me. I know you. Answer!”

He smiled, flashing white teeth. “I was a slave on the river, all the way from Skjar. For half a year I hid from you in plain sight! I stayed out of your boat, but you must have caught glimpses of me.”

That voice! The Mother veiled him for her, shrouded him in white.

“So that was you, too,” she said. “Yesterday in Tryfors, the seer?”

“It was me.” He laughed aloud. “I lied and you believed.” Flames of revenge and triumph blazed up around him like green wreaths.

She kept her rage in check, for now. “Not Nuthervale, then? You told us Nuthervale. So the rebels’ camp is not near Nuthervale! Where is it?”

His eyes widened in shock as he felt her control. “Near Tryfors, of course, on the Milky River. Why would anyone put it near Nuthervale?”

“Speak on!”

“I sent word,” his image said. “The night before we reached Tryfors. I told them to strike soon, so they can catch you as well as Therek.” He began to fade, but his eyes burned bright with hate. “The jaws are closing, monster! They are coming for you. The gods will have revenge.”

Saltaja started awake with a pounding heart and a sour taste of pursuit in her throat. It was many, many years since she had been hunted and the sensation was distasteful. After leaving Zorthvarn, Hrag and she had been harried from place to place. Producing four sons in seven years, they had needed enormous amounts of power to Shape them. Too many unexplained disappearances soon made neighbors suspicious.

She was lying on the flagstone floor of Halfway Hall, in a corner walled off by three upturned tables. Her new Guitha was curled up nearby, snuffling unpleasantly in her sleep. The rest of the upland shelter was packed with sleeping Werists, most of them forced to sit upright, leaning against the walls or one another. The place reeked of male bodies and throbbed with massed snoring.

Halfway to Nardalborg, and so far so good. She had made Fellard bring his entire hunt, although that was less than two sixty, and so far they had obeyed him. She had ridden in a chariot at first, and after that on a sled that Fellard had thought to bring, but the men had been run to exhaustion. By the time they had staggered into the shelter, well after sunset, they had been past thinking of mutiny. Huntleader Karrthin, back in Tryfors, had more men, but not many more, and he would not strip the city of Werists. He was much more likely to wait and see what happened than he was to come after her. No, her present escort was the greater danger. In the morning, rested but hungry, they might have a change of loyalty.

But what the Old One had just told her was worrisome. The accursed Dantio had tipped off the rebels! Until now she had not considered the deserters an immediate threat. She knew that the Milky River was only a little way downstream from Tryfors. Curse Therek for not knowing that mutiny was festering practically outside his windows! How many rebels? She had accounted for at least thirty sixty deserters over the last three years or so, and the brass-collared Heroes were so hard to conceal that they could have been concentrated in very few places. Even if all Therek’s host stayed true to their oaths-and she had few illusions about that improbability-they would be outnumbered five to one. The rebels would seize Tryfors, then Nardalborg, close the pass, leave Stralg cut off in Florengia. It might take two years for Eide and Horold to clean them out.

If they ever can, whispered a cold breath of cowardice.

The traitors have enough men to storm Nardalborg and Tryfors at the same time, countered another.

She shivered and opened her eyes. The candles had gone out, but faint chinks of light seeped around the shutters. She sat up, aching and feeling her age. She had forbidden Huntleader Fellard to sleep, ordering him to sit on the only stool in the shelter, keeping watch just outside her barricade. He heard her move and peered around, although he probably could not see her. He looked haggard, twice the age he had seemed just a day ago.

“Is it dawn?” she asked.

“No, lady. That’s the aurora, the Veils of Anziel.”

“But we could travel by its light?”

“Probably, but the men are exhausted. So are the animals.”

“Warbeasts can run.”

“Not as far as Nardalborg, my lady! It would cripple them to go that far without meat.”

“Waken Flankleader Ern. Tell him to rouse his men. I will go on ahead with just his flank as escort. You and the rest will remain here in case Huntleader Karrthin comes after me. Or anyone else, for that matter.”

He took a moment to answer, eyes struggling to stay in focus. He was already close to the end of his usefulness. “Lady, we have no more food. The animals have no fodder.”

“Slaughter the onagers. Throw a couple of haunches on my sled, so my escort can eat as we go. They will pull me.” She glanced at the snoring Guitha and decided just to leave her. There were women at Nardalborg. “You have your orders, Fellard!”

There was no chance of getting lost. They could follow the trail the mammoths had left two days ago, and she would be in Nardalborg before noon if she had to kill the whole of Ern’s flank getting there.

had shed a few drops of blood on the cold earth before she lay down to sleep. She had prayed the Old One to send her wisdom, to show her some way she might help rescue Tranquility. “Perhaps,” she had suggested, “you could show me Horold’s sentries exchanging passwords?” Knowing those, Orlad could send his men into the camp.

Suddenly she could hear voices. The dream was dark, but she recognized the cavern, the temple of the Old One under the Skjar pantheon-faint tendrils of light far overhead, shiny rock faces, some moss. This was where she had sworn loyalty to Xaran. She was standing unpleasantly close to the edge of the chasm. Why had she been brought here? Who was talking?

A man loomed out of the dark… very large, very ugly… bald and bloated, yellow-toothed. His face was too long, not improved by the dirty yellow beard dangling to his belly. He was holding the ankles of a naked girl, who must be still alive, because she was moaning as he dragged her behind him. He dropped her at the edge and rolled her closer with a shove of a bare foot.

“Holy Mother of Evil,” he said. “Accept what’s left of her.” Another shove and she went over with a faint cry. He stood staring after her, leering as if he could watch her bounce from ledge to ledge, tooth to tooth, all the way down.

Behind him came Saltaja, equally naked and carrying a slab of rock as if it took all her strength to do so. Her hands were bloody halfway to her elbows.

The man spoke without turning. “You want to do the boys?”

Saltaja said, “Of course.” With a great effort she raised the rock and slammed it against the back of his head.

The blow should have flattened his skull, yet somehow he saved himself from toppling forward into the abyss. He buckled to his knees, began to slide, then twisted and grabbed hold of her ankle. His other hand clawed at the crumbling brink, seeking purchase.