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because the Hazards are afraid that you might move to free the slayer-of
sorcerers called Cime before she comes to trial. Although my master assured
them
that you would not, that you had said nothing to him about this woman,
when I
left they still were not satisfied, but were shaking walls and raising shades
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r r
and doing all manner ofwizardly things to demonstrate their concern.'
The eunuch fell quiet, awaiting leave to rise. For an instant there was total
silence, then the sound of Tempus's slithering dismount. Then he said: 'Let
us
see your brand, pretty one,' and with a wiggling of its upthrust rump the
eunuch
hastened to obey,
It took Tempus longer than he had estimated to wrest a confession from
the
Wriggly, from the Ilsig who was the last of his line and at the end of his line.
It did not make cries of pleasure or betrayal or agony, but accepted its destiny
as good Wrigglies always did, writhing soundlessly. - '
When he let it go, though the blood was running down its legs and it saw the
intestine like wet parchment caught in his fingernails, it wept with relief,
promising to deliver his exhortation posthaste to Kadakithis. It kissed his
hand, pressing his palm against its beardless cheek, never realizing that it
was, itself, his message, or that it would be dead before the sun set.
2
Kneeling to wash his arm in the surf, he found himself singing a best-
forgotten
funerary dirge in the ancient argot all mercenaries leam. But his voice was
gravelly and his memories were treacherous thickets full of barbs, and he
stopped as soon as he realized that he sang. The eunuch would die because
he
remembered its voice from the workshop of despicable Kurd, the frail and
filthy
vivisectionist, while he had been an experimental animal therein. He
remembered
other things, too: he remembered the sear of the branding iron and the smell
of
flesh burning and the voices of two fellow guardsmen, the Hell Hounds
Zaibar and
Razkuli, piercing the drug-mist through holes the pain poked in his stupor.
And
he recalled a protracted and hurtful healing, shut away from any who might
be
overawed to see a man regrow a limb. Mending, he had brooded, seeking
certainty,
some redress fit to his grievance. But he had not been sure enough to act.
Now,
after hearing the eunuch's tale, he was certain. When Tempus was certain.
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r r
Destiny got out its ledger.
But what to write therein? His instinct told him it was Black Jubal he
wanted,
not the two Hell Hounds; that Razkuli was a nonentity and Zaibar, like a
raw
horse, was merely in need of schooling. Those two had single-handedly
arranged
for Tempus's snuff to be drugged, for him to be branded, his tongue cut out,
then sold off to wicked little Kurd, there to languish interminably under the
knife? He could not credit it. Yet the eunuch had said - and in such straits no
one lies - that though Jubal had gone to Zaibar for help in dealing with
Tempus,
the slave trader had known nothing of what fate the Hell Hounds had in mind
for
their colleague. Never mind it; Jubal's crimes were voluminous. Tempus
would
take him for espionage - that punishment could only be administered once.
Then
personal grudges must be put aside: it is unseemly to hold feuds with the
dead.
But if not Jubal, then who had written Tempus's itinerary for Hell? It
sounded,
suspiciously, like the god's work. Since he had turned his back upon the god,
things had gone from bad to worse.
And if Vashanka had not turned His face away from Tempus even while he
lay
helpless, the god had not stirred to rescue him (though any limb lopped off
him
still grew back, any wound he took healed relatively quickly, as men judge
such
things). No, Vashanka, his tutelary, had not hastened to aid him. The speed
of
Tempus's healing was always in direct proportion to the pleasure the god
was
taking in His servant. Vashanka's terrible rebuke had made the man wax
terrible,
also. Curses and unholy insults rang down from the mind of the god and up
from
the mind of the man who then had no tongue left with which to scream. It
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