Part 11 (1/2)
One week they had given him cabbage soup. But that petty change had been enough to revive his morale. So it was pumpkin soup or nothing.
The remnants of his most recent meal splashed the floor. Bile befilthed his mouth.
He spat.
”Day will come,” he promised in a whisper. ”Is in balance of eternity, on great mandala. Reverse of fortunes will come.”
His torturers spun him. Around and around and around, till he was drunk with dizziness and pain. Then they hoisted him to the ceiling, brought him down in a series of jerks. He heaved again, but there was nothing left in his stomach.One of them washed his mouth.
This time was different, he realized. Radically different. This was new.
He paid attention.
The Man in the Mask moved.
He peered into Mocker's eyes, pulling each lid back as would a physician. Mocker saw eyes as dark as his own behind slits from which the jewels had been removed. No.
Wait. This mask wasn't the one he usually saw. Instead of traceries of black on gold, this bore traceries of gold on black. A different man? He didn't think so. The feeling was the same.
There was no emotion, no mercy in those eyes. They were the eyes of a technician, the bored eyes of a peasant halfway through a day's hoeing midway through planting season.
That mask, though.... The changes were slight, yet, somehow, the alienness was gone. He began searching the burning attic of his mind.
The mask, the black robes, and the hands forever encased in the most finely wrought gauntlets he had ever seen, those were things he knew....
Tervola. s.h.i.+nsan. He remembered them so well he was sure this wasn't a genuine Tervola.
Trickery was the way he would have programmed this had their roles been reversed.
That mask.... He remembered it now. He had seen it at Baxendala. It had lain abandoned on the battlefield after O s.h.i.+ng had begun his retreat. Gold lines on black, ruby fangs, the cat-gargoyle. That one, Mist had said, belonged to a man called Chin, one of the chieftains of the Tervola.
They had a.s.sumed, then, that Chin had perished.
Maybe he hadn't, though the eye-crystals had been removed from the mask....
”Chin. Old friend to rescue,” Mocker gasped, straining for a sarcastic smile.
The man's only response was a slight hesitation before he said, ”There will be more pain, fat one. Forever, if need be. I can wait. Or you can listen. And learn.”
”Self, am all ears. Head to toe, two big ears.”
”Yes. You will be. The time of crudeness has ended. Now you begin listening and answering.” He straightened, faced the door.
Two men pushed a wheeled cart through. Mocker ground his teeth though he didn't understand what he saw on the cart.
The Man in the Mask made him understand those sorcerer's tools.
The pain was worse than any he had known before. This agony was scientifically applied, to one purpose. To drive him mad.
Mocker never had been very stable. It took just two days to crack him completely.
They let him rave in darkness for a week.Something happened then. More pain. Smoke smells, of flesh burning. Screams that weren't his own. Men struggling. A scream that was his own when he hit the floor of the cell.... Darkness. Peaceful, restful darkness.
The night whispers returned. They changed, becoming gentle, delicate whispers, happy, cheerful whispers, like those of a nymph beneath a waterfall. They calmed him.
They shaped him.
Then there were gentle, feminine hands, and the distant murmur of grave-voiced men.
But for a long time he was bound, his eyes blindfolded. His memories remained vague, confused. A man in a mask. El Murid's men... he thought. And Mercenary officers.
They kept him drugged and he knew that, but occasionally he came round long enough to catch s.n.a.t.c.hes of conversation.
Once, evidently, a new nurse: ”Oh, dear! What happened?” Horror filled her voice.
”He was tortured,” a man replied. ”Burned. I don't entirely understand it. From what he says, he was set up by men he thought were his friends. n.o.body knows why yet.
Lord Chin rescued him.”
What? Mocker thought. His brains must be scrambled. Wasn't Chin the torturer?
”It was a complicated plot. One of his friends apparently tipped El Murid's agents, who kidnapped him. Then he sent mercenaries who staged a rescue-then turned him over to this Haroun, who wore the mask the Lord lost when the Dragon tried invading the west.”
”You said....”
”There's a link between man and mask. The Lord lost his, but he still knows everything that happens if someone wears it.... Hold it. I think he's coming around.
Better give him another sniff. He needs a lot more healing before we let him wake up.”
It may have been a day or week later. It was another man and another woman. This time the man seemed to be the newcomer.
”... says Lord Chin transferred right into the dungeon. For some reason bin Yousif wore the captured mask that day instead of the one he'd had made to look like it.
Lord Chin knew the minute he put it on. He'd broken the eye crystals, apparently thinking that was enough to end the connection.”
”Bet the Lord caused an uproar.”
The woman laughed musically. ”They're still petrified, thinking s.h.i.+nsan's coming again. They're chasing their tails. They don't know there's a new order here, that Ehelebe has come.”
”What happened?”
”The one called Haroun got away. Lord Chin punished the others.”
”Bin Yousif would. He's slippery.”
”He can't run forever. Ehelebe has come. None shall escape the justice of the Pracchia.”
Even in his dazed state Mocker thought that a little preachy. Perhaps the woman was a fanatic or recent convert.
”What were they trying to do?””Lord Chin thinks they were preparing him as a weapon against s.h.i.+nsan. The man called Ragnarson is paranoid about it.... Get that cotton and the bottle. He's waking up.”