Hammerfall

“Are you mad?” the Ila asked. The room spun like the direction of the voices. The pain gathered in his bones and seemed to have found a home there, and in his silence an angry guard brought a length of chain down across his back. “Are you mad?” the Ila asked again, in that soft voice. “Or is this one of your father’s tricks?”

“As mad as they are,” he said. He was dismayed to discover sudden cowardice in himself, that he feared another of those blows, and he despised himself that his mouth found it better to answer. He no longer knew for what he hoped. He told himself that his hope was to get to his feet again, and to try again, but his limbs would not, could not, and his heart had discovered a fear to equal fear of his father. “Mad as all the rest,” he mumbled.

“And your father gave you up.”

He failed to answer. The chain came down across his back.

“Yes,” he said.

“And when did you know you had the madness?”

“Years,” he said. “For years.”

“As a boy?”

It admitted a time of helplessness. It opened the door to his father’s house, his mother’s shame, his father’s disowning him after all these years. He said nothing, and knew the blow of the chain would come. Damn them, he thought, and then discovered the limit of his fear, right at the boundary of stubborn, foolish pride.

The chain crashed across his back.

But the lift of a gloved hand had prevented its full force and forestalled another blow.

“Tain knew?” the Ila asked. “Or is Tain Trin Tain mad, too?”

“No,” he said, and caught a breath. “No to both.”

“How many others are mad in your household?”

“None that I know.” It was the question she had asked the others. They were into the safe litany of the others’ questions, and he could let go his breath and cease to expect the blows. He could gather his strength.

“How did it come?”

“As lights. As voices.” The red-robed au’it wrote each answer, sitting on the steps by the Ila’s feet, her book on her lap and her pen moving busily between ink-cake and page.

“And Tain did not at any time know.”

“No,” he said. “Not until the last. I kept it secret.”

“And what betrayed you?” The Ila moved, a whisper of silk like the creeping of a serpent as she leaned her pale chin on a red-gloved, jeweled fist. “Did you fall in a fit?”

“I did,” he said. Shame heated his face. He had fallen at his father’s feet, in front of all the chiefs. He spared himself confessing that part, that moment, all the shocked faces.

“What did your father do?”

“He asked me the truth, and I stopped lying.” The silence hung there, filled with only that. He wanted to move on. “He had heard your men were gathering up the mad. He sent for them.”

“He was glad to let you go.”

“If glad is true,” he said. His father’s life was blunted, now, turned sharply back on itself: no heir, no wife, and now a diminished reputation, either in laughter or in pity. Was that gladness in Tain Trin Tain? Was Tain in any wise relieved to have signed that armistice with the Ila?

He thought not. But he thought little else. The pain in his body diminished, but the roaring in his ears reached a numbing pitch, and persisted, as if all the voices were bottled up in him, trying to find expression. Death began again to seem friendly. He asked himself how much more before his brain scrambled, before he had to scream. He bit his lip, bit it bloody.

“Do you see lights and hear voices?” the Ila asked.

“Yes.”

“And what do these voices say?”

“Nothing of sense.” Could it beworse? He doubted he could keep his feet if he could gain them.

“And the pictures? The images? The visions?”

He fixed his sight on the Ila’s face, one stable point in a swinging world. It spun, and tilted, and stopped, over and over again. “Buildings,” he said. “Buildings. A tower.”

“This tower? The Beykaskh?”

He shook his head to clear it. She might take that headshake for no, and it was the truth. He focused on her, only on her. Past the whiteness, she had a classic Lakhtanin face, thin and bow-nosed. Her lids were black-rimmed. The iris was dark. The eyes became pits into which sense could fall, and, no, she was not a child: the eyes alone said she was not a child.

A gloved finger raised, forbidding, then curled itself across the lips, convenient resting place. “The son of my enemy. The one who burns my towns, steals from my treasury, robs my caravans, despoils my priests. What shall I make of you?”

The pain had spread out of the joints and migrated to soft places. The noise in his ears roared and made her voice distant.

“Tain has given his son away,” the Ila mocked him, “so Itake him. What shall I make of you, Marak Trin Tain? What shall I name you instead?”

Mockery he would not endure. “General of your armies,” he said, courting their violence. “Captain of your guard.”

She leaned back, lifted a hand, perhaps to forestall her officers. The au’it, who had written it all, ceased writing, poised the pen above the page of her book.

The Ila’s hand described a circle in the air. The au’it shut the book and put down her pen.

“Now without record,” the Ila said, “I ask you… where is this madness?”

“In the east,” he said without thinking, and astonished himself. It was in the east. Everything was in the east. It had no reason to be, but he knew it was, and it disturbed him to the heart.

“You wish to be a captain of my guard,” the Ila said. “I have a one that suffices. But a captain of explorers, perhaps, as there used to be, before there were the tribes. So you are. I name you to ride out for me and find the source of the madness. I name you to go where the mad go when they wander out, and find out why they turn to the east. I name you to return to me and to report whatever you learn. And ifyou return to me and report the truth, I will give you a gift. Youwill rule Kais Tain.”

A stir of utter dismay went through the captains.

He himself did not believe it.

“I have set my seal on Kais Tain,” the Ila said, “and have all persons therein under that seal. Write it!” she said, and the au’it wet her pen and wrote. “They live or they die as you please me, and after you do my will, they live or they die as they please you. What other reward do you wish for your service?”

Was he not to die? He searched all the crevices of that utterance, looking for the reason in what he heard.

Was he not to die? And did the Ila make a barbed joke, and had the au’it written it in the book as if it were the truth, and the law?

The pain made it difficult to think. The roaring made it difficult to hear anything sensible.

“Is that enough?” the Ila asked him, as if she bargained in a market. “Do you agree to my terms?”

He could not think on his knees. He struggled to his feet. Fire shot up and down the bones. Defying it, he straightened his back, and fire ran there, too.

“My mother,” he said. “Now. My sister. I want them safe from Tain.”

The Ila moved a vertical finger against her lips and gazed at him.

“Is there a dispute within Tain’s house?”

“He’s threatened them. Keep them safe. Provide for them. And I’ll get your answer.”

“I don’t bargain.”

“I do.” His effrontery stung the guards. They began to move; they laid hands on him; and desisted, perhaps in fear of lightning.

“I shall provide you all you need,” the Ila said mildly, “and appoint you a captain as you ask, and give you all the resources you ask. And I shall set my seal on your mother and your sister and have them safe. Do you agree?”

It was surely a trap, a trick, a mockery. But the roaring burst like a dam in his ears, and the madmen turned and twitched together, some falling on the floor.

“Leave,” the Ila said, motioning toward the doors. “And take them out!” She pointed at Marak. “ You stay!”