The High King's Tomb

The lack of sleep and too little food and water weakened her. She was too well-versed in dispensing torture not to know it was a matter of time before she gave in, but she had no idea what her captors wanted from her, for no one ever questioned her. Maybe it was torture for the sake of torture. At least when she utilized it, she was always after a confession or information. If she simply wanted someone out of the way, she killed them and did not make them suffer.

Once in a while she became aware of the Little Girl sitting on the periphery of the haze playing string games. Games Beryl once played when she was a child. Child? Had she really been a child once? Little Girl wove the strings about her fingers making designs until Beryl felt caught up in the strings; bound, prey in a spider’s web, only the web was gold chains, beautiful and painful.

At other times Little Girl threw pebbles at her, trying to make her flinch. When Beryl learned to endure pebbles, pebbles became rocks, and Beryl thought the hooks would flay the flesh off her bones when she reacted to being hit in the face.

Sometimes Grandmother took Little Girl by the hand and led her away, scolding her.

Beryl was chanting the infantryman’s basic half-time cadence in her mind when she became aware of two people standing on the edge of the haze.

“What are we going to do with her?” It was the gravelly-voiced man whom she was certain she knew, but she dared not divert her mind from the cadences to try and remember his identity.

“She’s strong,” Grandmother said. “We will leave her.”

“We should just kill her. Or torture her conventionally. This is not useful.”

“Now, now. Do not underestimate what you cannot see. She will break eventually, then we’ll decide if she is useful to us. I’d like to discover the source of her ability. Long ago the Green Riders were ordered to give up their magical devices. Their maker, Isbemic, was forced to destroy them. Some deceit has been at work all these centuries and I wish to unravel it.”

The voices ebbed from Beryl’s hearing. There was only the rhythm of marching feet and the pain of gold chains.

AN UNEXPECTED MESSAGE

Much to Karigan’s amusement, Barrett was still angry enough from the previous day’s encounter that he communicated with her and Fergal using only single words and sharp gestures.

This time they were actually going to see Timas, and Barrett led them up a winding staircase. Karigan felt battle ready, almost eager to spar with her old nemesis, but she could not forget what she was and who she represented. It meant she must remain moderate in her words and actions, to always reflect well upon the king and the Green Riders. It was unfortunate to be constrained by her position, but there were other, subtle ways to nettle Timas.

She hoped Beryl would be there, beside Timas, as she’d always been for Timas’ father.

The stairway opened into another corridor just as dark and narrow as anyplace else in the keep, lit by torches that blackened the ceiling with soot. The keep had a primitive quality to it that reminded Karigan of the abandoned, ancient corridors of the king’s castle, but these weren’t abandoned.

Barrett led them to the far end of the corridor where a large door with a raised carving of a war hammer breaking a mountain sealed off a room. He opened it and entered the room, the Riders behind him.

The lord-governor’s receiving room was like a small throne room, long and narrow with an elaborate chair gilded in gold set on a dais at the far end, a hearth gaping behind it. Armor and weapons displays lined the walls, along with portraits of, Karigan assumed, Mirwells through the generations.

In fact, the current lord-governor was having his portrait painted. He stood at the throne, a foot on the dais and one hand on the throne’s arm. He held a war hammer to his breast—no doubt the clan’s ancestral weapon from the Long War days. It was wood and iron, and unadorned, the handle darkened from centuries of use and, perhaps, blood.

Natural light streamed through a narrow window and onto his face. A velvet cloak of scarlet stitched with gold thread flowed off his shoulder and draped at his feet and beneath he wore the longcoat of a Mirwellian commander, dazzling with gold fringed epaulets, insignia, cords, gold piping, and elaborate oak leaf embroidery. Medals he certainly could not have earned in a single lifetime covered his breast and made his black silk baldric sag. At his hip he wore a smallsword that, in contrast to the plain war hammer, had a finely wrought swept hilt and a ruby set in the pommel and was sheathed in a jewel-encrusted scabbard.

Karigan took in that scene, then glanced over the artist’s shoulder to compare it with the painting. The painting was well along and depicted Timas, his attire, and his surroundings in a realistic way, and yet more so…Maybe it was how the artist captured the light. There was a strong romantic feel to the rendering. Timas’ face appeared more pure, as though he was blessed by the gods, and in fact the artist incorporated the crescent moon into the window leading, which was, in reality, made up of plain panels. Timas’ hair was shown as more raven, his flesh more full of color, and most important, the artist made him appear taller than he was.

Karigan wanted to laugh, wanted to laugh at how ridiculous Timas looked in his getup, and at how little he’d grown since their school days. He was still short. She wondered what people would think of him from that painting a hundred years from now. They’d think him tall, noble, and even heroic. Timas had chosen his artist well, but truly, only his deeds in life would determine whether or not he lived up to that image.

In addition to Timas and the artist, there was an officer sitting in a lesser chair to the side, looking through papers. He was a colonel, and he was not, Karigan was sorry to see, Beryl Spencer. Where was she?