He squealed, from pain or panic or his madness, and reared up, kicking the sky. He was slick with sweat. I clung as I could, and slipped and clung again.
I had believed I could only hope to hang on him like a mountain cat, till he died of the poison or dislodged me and tore out my vitals with his teeth. Suddenly something else swarmed through me. It was like the bite of strong liquor, like lust even. It was the notion I could mend him.
There had been one earlier day, long past, when I had kneeled over two does by a winter pool, and I had known it was life I took, the possession of another. And now, hugging the plunging stallion, washed by his pain, snowed by his bloody foam, I felt his life and his right. Both to die for the whim of a pusillanimous fool, or both to live?
What happened after that was swift but very certain. It was like the wave that suffused me, the light that burst me when I slew Ettook. Yet it was different. It was like a dam holding back the sea, and the dam breaks and the sea pours
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through, but there is no substance to the sea, no heaving force, no tumult, only a faint shining on the back of the eyes, and a stillness after.
The horse was still, also. He stood there, breathing and shaking his head softly, as if embarrassed by his wildness before. He picked up his hooves as though to examine them or the sensation of their being on solid ground.
He had voided the muck and they had given him all along the flats; the dung was greenish and had an acid smell. Maybe it was after all that this voiding had cured him, not any mage-craft of mine.
I was shaking as if I needed food or a woman. Then the shaking went off and I looked around about me.
Erran’s courtiers were at a loss, Some had been cheering me, I vaguely recalled, for my berserk dash at the stallion’s head, but this was beyond their scope.
The golden bear had wandered a little to the front of them, trying to puzzle it out, doubtless.
I slid off the stallion and shouted for one of the gawking grooms to come and cover him up, for his sweat was still steaming in the icy wind.
I walked straight to Demizdor’s gold bear. I was no longer angry or bemused. I was precise, knowing what came next.
I did not carry a sword out in the park, just a knife for cutting rope or hard earth from the horses’ hooves. I stuck the knife to its hilt in the bear’s belly, and watched him wriggle and stagger and try to pull it free, and finally roll down in the broken snow, and die.
In the cities, a bronze-mask does not kill one of his lord’s gold men.
That is the way of it, with no going around.
I suppose I had turned crazy, having endured the cage when I should have refused it, now refusing when I should have endured. Like many a man before me, I acted at the wrong moment and in the wrong way, because I ought to have acted sooner and had not.
My wrath was finished. I was only adamant, aware I had lost everything, life, too, most likely, and had no more to cast away.
I was taken back to Erran’s palace and flung down head
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first into my room of apricot windows. Any weapon here was removed, the ring-key appropriated; I was locked in.
Presently Erran visited me with three silver captains.
“I am disappointed in you,” he said. “You are a fool.”
I said, “I have upset your plans because you made me a toy for idiots. You should have judged me better. You are the fool, my lord.”
“We shall see,” he said.
He walked about before me, relaxed and easy, as if he seed watch for nothing. Obviously, it would not serve me to kill him; there were too many who could step into his boots.
He picked up one of the books that lay on the table. He said, “You have acquired quite a taste for city things-literature, music, love …. Some while ago, when I got you from Kortis’ servile clutches, I think I told you how your healing process fascinated and intrigued me. Because you have transgressed, because you must be punished for it, I have decided to learn thereby the answer to my question. You can be of no other use to me.”
Despite myself, my mouth went dry. I would need to be a fool in truth not to see what was coming. He said, quietly and without undue coldness, and with none of Zrenn’s excitement, “I shall begin by cutting off your right hand, my Vazkor. I shall then be able to discover for myself, as indeed will you, to what extent your body is able to reproduce its tissues. Later, I will put out your eyes, extract your tongue, and sever your windpipe. If you survive so much, my physicians shall remove your inner parts. You may, naturally, die of shock before we can proceed so far. If you live and are able to repair-which is a debatable and curious thought-it may be that I shall reinstate you as my underling. It would be shortsighted not to retain such a prize-an entirely invulnerable champion.”
A terror like black worms oozed up my throat, but I would not let him see it take hold of me. I said, “When you are on your deathbed, Erran, pray that you never meet me in the place you are going to.”
He made a gesture that cried, Ah, the savage is back in him. What is this nonsense of meetings and afterlife? Aloud, he said only, “We begin at dawn tomorrow. For tonight you shall be brought food and liquor, women, if you want. Enjoy your senses while you have them.”
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The sunset dulled to magenta behind the thick panes of the western window, yet speared in bright orange flashes through eyelets of broken crystal.
This strange and contrasted patterning was a result of the handiwork I had been putting in on the window with a bench, a table, the bronze-ware cups and jug. To no avail. The leading held, the glass sugared into fragments, none of them large enough to furnish a weapon.
Long before the sun went down, constructing its ominous sorcery of color with the casement, I had consigned myself to an assortment of grim alternatives. That I should come on some fighting means unexpectedly during this last night, or that tomorrow I could ask for the barber to shave me before Erran’s guard arrived, forcibly borrow his razors and do some business with them. Other wild thoughts ran about my skull. I might tempt in the sentries who had been set outside my door; they were bronzes, partial to wine … a sword snatched, a break made-I should be trapped and slain, no other thing seemed possible, but not chopped up for death like a piece of butcher’s meat that still lived, and some should go with me. Then, too, I think I dreamed I might escape them, knowing I dreamed it.
The window became somber and the wind came through where I had damaged it.
An hour after sundown, the door was opened. A silver captain and ten bronze guards entered to supervise the setting of my dinner by two cloth-masks. With perverse generosity, Erran had sent me excellent fare. When the men had gone, I ate some of it, thinking to fatten myself for bravado, but the taste was dust and ashes, and the meal soon abandoned.
Beyond my prison, I could hear music playing in the city. There was always some melody or song abroad in Eshkorek by night.
I smashed my fist against the leaded frame of the window, because this was no time for songs.
It was later that the door opened again.
It opened only a crack. Through the crack stole a single figure, the ultimate horrible jest. For Erran had sent me my last woman.
The candles were smoky; I could not make her out at first. Slender, muffled in a flimsy shabby veiling, the hint of light
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catching a bronze mask-I had been going to be rough, but checked myself.
“Sparrow,” I said, “of all of them, he should not have sent you to me.”
Yet she was too tall for Sparrow. Suddenly the veil slipped from her hair and the candles blazed in it. She put up her hand to draw off the mask, and she wore one long scarlet glove of blood from fingers to elbow.
My guest was Demizdor, and in her grasp the red-wet gleaming of a knife.
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Her face was white. She said, as if it explained everything, “I have killed your guard. There was only one.”