Dave Duncan - Children of Chaos

"He needn't know." Saltaja's wandering had brought her to the window beside the bell rope.

"Anyway, it's four!" Therek said. "Not three, four." He stalked farther away from her.

"Four what?"

"Sons. You've been missing your mail. Deeply sorry to tell you that Huntleader Kwirarl has died." His toothless sneer could not have looked less sympathetic.

Kwirarl Eideson, her youngest! For a moment she was speechless, dazzled by memories of his smile, his laugh, and racked by a sense of betrayal. Mother of Death, You test Your servant hard ! After all the oceans of blood she had spilled to honor the Old One, it seemed unfair that she should lose so many of her own children so young. It was not for me, Mother, it was for the Family ! A dynasty needs heirs, and You have taken too many !

She drummed her fists on the window ledge. Oh, Kwirarl, Kwirarl ! None of the sons she had given Eide had made warriors to compare with the sons of Hrag, partly because Eide was not Hrag and partly because she'd had to Shape them without Hrag's help. Kwirarl had turned out the best of her second brood, probably because Eide was not his father. Gone?

"Died how?"

"It was back in the spring sometime. Stralg just said he was ambushed while on patrol. If the rebels took him alive, it would have been long and nasty."

She shuddered. Bad, bad news, ever since she left Skjar! First Horold, then Therek. Now Kwirarl. On the way home she would have to waste time in Kosord repairing Horold, and Therek had deteriorated enormously since she had last seen him. She wondered how much useful life he had left in him, really. Perhaps she could use him as an exhibit while teaching Fabia the finer points of Shaping. In a moment she would look and see how bad the problem was.

"I need a couple of bodyguards."

"Pretty ones, of course." He sneered. "You still hanker after the pretty ones?"

"I want two who came here with me, Ern Jungrson and Brarag Braragson. Send for them." It was true that they were strikingly good-looking kids, but these days she chose pretty ones only out of habit and because it amused her to let people think she had a weakness. She had not bothered with sex for years, although she was probably capable of bearing children, even yet. "And a seer. I want to ask about these desertions."

Therek wasn't mad enough to shut himself off completely in this aerie; he kept heralds on duty in the room below: "Pull on that rope," he growled.

"You pull it." She turned to stare out the window.

Eyeing her warily, he came just close enough to reach it, but that was close enough to put him within range of her Dominance. As he was about to back away again, she took control, keeping it gentle so he did not feel her touch. He stayed where he was.

A boy came scampering up the stairs, doubling over in a bow almost before he stopped moving. "My lord?"

Therek warbled, "I want Warrior, er..."

"Flankleader Ern Jungrson," Saltaja said, "and Warrior Brarag Braragson."

"I want them now!" Therek shrilled. "And the seer. If there's any delay, I'll have you all whipped again."

The boy vanished, yelling for assistance.

Saltaja went to Therek and gripped his face between her hands, pulling his head down to her level. She froze him, and the terror in his eyes glazed over in a trance.

Once his mind had been as familiar to her as his face, but what she found in there now appalled her. Ruin!—like a house sliding into a swamp, an earthquake-shattered city ... walls cracked and tumbled, pillars leaning, fungoid weeds everywhere. Wrong, all of it; wrong! Indefinable things moved in the darker corners. The mangled state of Horold's wits had shocked her, but this was much worse. With shudders of distaste she began exploring and defining.

She prodded with a mental finger at a conspicuous suppurating abscess. "Speak."

" Oath-breakers !" he mumbled. Of course, the notorious Florengian mutineers ... The sinister dark murk must be Hrag. She touched that. " Father ..." The purple color over here, she recalled, was herself, even more baleful than Hrag, shrouded in fear. The boys had all established much the same image of her, varying only in detail. The throbbing red sore she established as Orlad Celebre. She moved on to peer in the smaller interstices, the personal niches and crevices of what had once been a glittering set of wits. These three faint, flickering blotches? She triggered them one at a time and Therek spoke the names of his dead sons: " Nars ... Hrag... Stralg ..."

No one else; no women anywhere, so far as she could see. Like Stralg, Therek had never formed attachments; would even a Nymph accept such a gargoyle now?

All wrong, all warped. She would need at least a thirty to sort this mess into some semblance of order, and then how long would it last? She couldn't even think of starting now, not up here, so high above cold earth. She was about to withdraw when she sensed a squirm, a brief twitch of avoidance. Here? No, here? There was something big, well obscured. The fear increased, pulsing darkly. She had to pry past walls, veils, barricades ... gently, or she would break things ... "Who?"

Therek mumbled and slobbered.

Harder, then. " Who ?"

Emotion burned in polychrome agony: "Heth."

That was a man's name. Karvak had been the chaser of boys, not Therek. She backed out until she was staring at the outside of his head once again, still clutching it. Drool hung from his lips. At some deep level he was struggling against the trance.

"Tell me who Heth is!" She used Dominance.

He moaned. "Heth ... Hethson ..."

A bastard. So! She was annoyed that Therek had managed to keep a nephew secret from her, but it might not be too late to use him, depending on the kid's age. Shaping worked best on blood relatives. Xaran knew she was running out of those! The Heth boy could be no less promising material than Cutrath Horoldson. Tomorrow, when she got Therek down on ground level and began to work on him, she would find out who and where this by-blow was, and how old.

"When I release you, you will forget everything that has happened since the boy left." She stepped back.

He jumped, pouted at her, and stalked off in a sulk, no doubt wondering what had caused that dizzy spell.

Saltaja found a stool and slumped down on it. Mother, she was tired! A day or two on the water did no harm, but that interminable voyage from Skjar had wearied her to the bone. Day in, day out, she missed the power of the cold earth. Sixty years ago she'd have thought nothing of it. She was growing old at last. Her control of events was slipping.

She saw now, in retrospect, that she had been too greedy. Twenty years ago, the Family had controlled the entire Vigaelian Face, with only sporadic rebellion left to quash—a hegemony unheard-of in all history. She should have been content with that, but she had let Stralg convince her that the horde would turn on itself if it had no external enemies to fight. She had let him invade Florengia. He had brought it to heel so easily that he had even started dreaming of expanding to the Ashurbian Face.

Ten years ago the Family had ruled two Faces, a sixth of the world, and Hrag's sons had bred another generation of warriors to hold the greatest inheritance Dodec had ever seen. Then Cavotti's mutiny had thrown cold reality in their faces.

And now? ... Now she might have to abandon Florengia and bring the survivors home to pacify Vigaelia. There were so few of Hrag's line left! Saltaja did not fear the dead, the least dangerous of people. She cared nothing for wraiths or ghosts or walking corpses, even if they existed, which she sometimes doubted. Yet she suspected that Hrag might be an exception, that even the Ancient One was not strong enough to hold him. Still, sometimes, she dreamed of the old monster—laughing at her, usually, and sending evil against his own seed so that they could not keep what he had dreamed of owning. But those were only dreams.