While the Icefalcon watched, Loses His Way tried to twist free his wrists nevertheless, veins bulging out at his temples with the tightening of the noose, until he dropped back limp again, chest heaving with the thread of incoming air.
"Leave it, me bonny," said Hethya softly, going to kneel beside him. "Leave it, you great fool. You'll only murder yourself." Her hand reached again, touched the blood-smeared red-gold hair.
The Icefalcon heard footfalls in the corridor and stepped back, shadow hand touching shadow sword.
Hethya, her eyes on Loses His Way's face, swung around in shock as the door opened and Vair na-Chandros strode in at the head of a small squad of warriors, and her hand went to her mouth.
"They can't see you," pointed out the Icefalcon, catching her arm to steady her. It interested him that for once she did not scream. "This is only a dream, you know."
Vair gestured to the dead. The clones, without a word spoken, began to strip them, pulling off footgear, weapons, furs. He glanced down at Loses His Way and said to Bektis in the Wathe, "What do you think? The lords of the borderlands tell me that White Raiders are without loyalty to their own people and can easily be turned to fight against other Raiders."
"This has been my experience as well, illustrious Lord." As usual Bektis bowed a little as he spoke.
Though immaculate as always-and still smoking very faintly with a personal heat-spell-the Icefalcon thought there was a suggestion of tension to the corners of his eyes, that the lines of strain were cut very deep indeed in the high dome of the forehead, and when he stroked the Hand of Harilomne his long fingers trembled.
"Indeed, for several years there was a barbarian in the High King's Guard, and he showed no compunction in turning his sword against his own brethren. They are utterly without loyalty."
"And you are utterly without brains," the Icefalcon said, "if you don't know the difference between my kindred the Talking Stars People and such cowardly vermin as the Salt People, the Empty Lakes People, and the Black Rock People who attacked the lands of the Wathe. And twice so if you think that I would raise my hand against the children of my own Ancestors, you witless dotard."
"Faith, is that a fact?" asked Hethya, surprised.
Did she really believe that such obvious trash as the Black Rock People could be related to the People of the Talking Stars? The Icefalcon opened his mouth to flay her ignorance, but Vair went on: "To he sure we could use another whole man in our forces, if we could be sure of his loyalty."
"Loyalty?" roared Loses His Way, heaving furiously in his bonds. His voice came out hoarse from strangulation.
More's the pity, reflected the Icefalcon, that he didn't strangle himself into silence.
Noon had always taught him that the longer an enemy thought you could not understand his speech, the better off you would be. "Loyalty to you, you night-walking jackal? You murderer of my kin? Before I'd take one step back at your orders I'd walk over a cliff!"
The Icefalcon closed his eyes in momentary pained annoyance. "So you know our tongue." Vair stepped close to the bound man, his white cloak falling over the bulging, straining arms. "Your kin were fools to attack. As they shall learn."
From his belt he unhooked his whip and slashed Loses His Way hard across the face. The warrior stared up at him with blazing azure eyes and, unable to spit in the face of the man standing above him, spit instead at his groin.
Vair's mouth worked once, sharply. Without another word he began to beat the bound man before him, lashing at his face and shoulders with the whip until blood ran down into the tawny beard, then, when the whip would not cut through the tough hide and fur of Loses His Way's clothing, kicking him hard and systematically in the belly and back. Neither man made a sound.
When Vair was finished and stepped back, trying not to pant, Loses His Way raised his gory head and through the broken stumps of his front teeth, spat at him again. It was blood this time.
Vair's voice was shaking with anger. "My Truth-Finder Shakas Kar," he said, "will give you far more time than you will wish to regret that."
As he turned to go Loses His Way spat once more, the red gobbet striking the hem of the snowy cloak.
Bektis and the clones departed in their lord's wake, the clones with their arms full of clothing and weaponry.
"He is a fool." The Icefalcon looked down at the big man lying, panting, his cheek in the puddle of his blood. "But at least this matter diverted Bektis from looking at me, whom, beard or no beard, he would probably have known."
He looked down again at his own body, naked now like the others. Would he die, he wondered, in the cold? "And he might have seen the Runes of Ward on my face. It certainly kept any man present in such fear of speaking that no one remarked that I had no wound. Come."
He took her by the hand again and led the way into the corridor and down to the cell where the clones were dumping coats, shirts, long strips of rawhide binding, and the rag stuffing they wore beneath for warmth.
The cell's door had long since crumbled, so they stationed another guard before it, another clone. But while the men were still unburdening themselves the slender scout Crested Egret strode down the corridor, all his creamy braids fluttering like pennons, and called out "My Lord! My Lord, the boy has escaped!"
Vair swung around, and his gold eyes seemed to pale in the glow of Bektis' witchlight, to pale and grow smaller, like an animal's that is about to attack. "And how is this?" he asked.
"My Lord, the man on guard doesn't know. He's one of the Ti Mens; he says he's been sitting there the whole time."
Vair's teeth showed white where his lips pulled back from them: "Does he now? Maybe Shakas Kar can jog his memory a little."
The Icefalcon personally couldn't imagine torturing a man so obviously incapable of remembering information, a man moreover who hadn't the smallest benefit to gain from helping the prisoner escape.
Bektis, Crested Egret, and at least two of the nonclone warriors present all thought so, too, for there was a general intake of breath...
And a general exhalation the next moment, words unsaid.
Ti Men the guard, the Icefalcon gathered, was in for a very bad few hours.
"Bektis..."
"I shall begin scrying immediately, my Lord." Bektis almost dropped to his belly in his haste to anticipate Vair's demand. "At once. But I beg you to remember, there are chambers in this fortress that were wrought to be proof against magic, proof against scrying as well."
Men were already hastening away to the search, Crested Egret summoning the guard from the weapons cell, explaining-in careful detail and words of one syllable-to the remaining clone on guard that he now had to watch both doors.
"And can you find these chambers?"
"Of course, my Lord. Of course." Bektis would have made the same prompt and affirmative reply, thought the Icefalcon, had the question involved eating the moon with a cheese-fork.
He hastened away with as much dignity as a man can retain when on the verge of breaking into a panic run; the Icefalcon did not blame him. Nearly everyone else had fled. Vair turned to follow; one last clone warrior emerged from the storage cell, handsome young face creased in puzzlement, clearly oblivious to all that had passed in the corridor.
He held out to Vair something that caught the torchlight in a spangle of black and green: a child's velvet slipper, sewn with emeralds. Too small to be Tir's or anything like Tir's. The very workmanship was strange, a remnant of some forgotten world.
"It was in there," said the clone, pointing back into the cell. "In the middle of the floor."
Vair turned it over in his gloved fingers, staring at it for some time with his strange golden eyes. Then he threw it aside and strode down the corridor. The clone picked it up and followed, still holding the pretty thing in his hand.