Rarmon was aware this was not a reprieve. In the dark undercaves he had been allowed use of a primitive bath, and fresh clothes were thrown in on the floor for him. To relax to the relief of these things, because he knew they would not last, was an act he resisted.
In the chimney, it was harder to resist. Physical endurance he possessed. The discomforts that swelled, minute by minute, hour by hour, into atrocious pain, these he made room for. But in such confinement a man became his own tormentor. Thoughts, memories—mind-devils. They danced about him in a space where he could barely shift from one foot to the other. Rarmon did not know how long he could master these other aspects of himself. How long it would be, therefore, until he went mad.
Kathus had seated himself and now observed Rarmon with an unfathomable expression. The he waved him to a chair.
“Thank you, no.”
Kathus nodded.
“Because your legs will strengthen the longer they’re forced to support you, the less respite they’re given. I see you think you’ll be sent back.”
Rarmon did not speak.
Kathus pointed to a dish of fruit, a pitcher of wine.
“To eat will also strengthen you.” Rarmon did not move. “You decline?”
“It seems rather futile.”
“You could have found means to kill yourself on the way here, but refrained.”
“An oversight.”
Kathus smiled.
“Once I had your father brought before me in a comparative position, my prisoner. You may be amused to hear, I found him less adroit than I find you. But then, he was younger, too.”
Kathus clapped his hands. Zakorians did not employ effete summoning bells.
A man entered, set down writing materials, and went out.
“You will,” said Kathus, “outline the Storm Lord’s proposed campaign for us. A general plan should do. Specific questions can be settled later.”
Rarmon crossed to the table. He dipped the pen and wrote one brief line.
Kathus rose and took the paper.
Rarmon had written, At this time, anything I tell you will be disbelieved.
“You’re accustomed,” said Kathus, “to being ill-treated. It began with your mother, no doubt. I knew your mother. I’ve seen you in your cradle, when the women called you Rarnammon. Actually, you were born, with a great deal of clamor, under my roof. Guard.”
They entered the open door and took Rarmon back to the chimney.
A little later, the fruit and wine were lowered to him, and contrived to be left hanging.
The temptation was too great—not so much the temptation of eating as of having something to do. As he gave in, he felt a terrible despair, unknown to him until now. But after he had eaten he slept, and though there were dreams they were no more than dreams, and constantly half-waking, he escaped them.
When his legs had grown numb again and the spike that filled his spine had again reached up and pierced his skull, he was taken out once more. Once more there was the bath, and the fresh clothing. It occurred to him Radius, whose apartment had had certain un-Zakorian refinements, only wanted him dusted off, as it were, so as not to soil the furnishings.
Rarmon limped up the stairways. When Kathus arrived the exchange was brief and the paper and ink already waiting. To sit down was now more agony than to stand, but Rarmon had to take the chair or he would have fallen, bending to the paper.
He had prepared a reasonable theory of Dortharian deployments, a fake. It might not be believed, and he must remember it, since probably he would be invited to repeat the format on many occasions. He had never intended to give them Dorthar’s true war-plans for, having those, the alternatives could be more easily mooted. Rarmon had no loyalty to Dorthar, she had not seemed to touch him. Nor was there a sense of kinship with the man who was his brother. Nevertheless, Free Zakoris was a midden. Even through a haze of exhaustion and blood, he had seen the skeletons of a score of exposed babies lying just off the road, a little heap like discarded rubbish. The concept of Free Zakoris astride Vis offended him. It went deeper and less deep than that. At this stage it was native of him to resist everything. Rather than grow confused, his allergy had become obsessive.
Lowered back into the chimney, he caught himself trying to impede the passage by twisting his body, trying to stop the inevitable descent. He forced his bootless intuition into abeyance and let himself drop the rest of the way.
Later, or perhaps in not so much more than a few minutes, the wine and fruit came down, and a meat gravy. He accepted it all, tilting the bowls into his mouth by angling them with his face.
Soon after, he threw up. Even as he puked—desperately, painfully, the upright position hampered it—he realized some emetic drug had been mixed with the wine or broth. When the spasms ended he stood in his own vomit, as in the rest of the bodily filth, and he began to want death. It was a passionate want.
For some time it filled his mind vividly, sending away even the haunts and horrors of his own inner brain.
Then this flame also died, overwhelmed by another less intellectual passion, equally intense. Thirst.
He fought off the thirst as he had not fought off the wish for death. He scrambled to recapture the ghastly memories that had ridden him earlier. He marshaled them against the torture of the thirst. But the thirst won.
It began to seem to him that if he called to the guards above the grill, they might let him have water without medicine in it. He knew this was not so. But his voice started to make hoarse croakings on its own, meaning to disobey him.
Then the thirst went away very suddenly.
He was not thirsty.
They were hauling him up again. When they stood him on the stone floor above the chimney he keeled over, stiff as a tree. They dragged him. There was no bath, now: he was not going up to Kathus. A man stood against torch-light and told Rarmon the tissue’ of lies he had written was seen through, but the Lord Kathus permitted him a further chance of redemption. Here was pen and paper. Now it must be the truth.
Rarmon wrote. You had the truth before. It stays the truth. His hand, writing, seemed miles from his eyes which saw it.
“No,” said the man. “This won’t do.”
Rarmon was offered wine. He took no notice of it.
They returned him to the chimney and let him down. It was always done quite gently, smoothly. As his feet went into the stinking slime of human excrement that lined the pit, Rarmon thought: I’ve only to continue to insist, remember the deployments as I set them down. They seem very clear. I could have done it, then. Eventually, they will accept my statement. Or, he thought, I could write a different thing each time. Valueless. They might kill me then.
But the dream-desire of death did not return.
Presently, a bowl of milk was lowered. He had the resource to butt it with his head, causing the bowl to shatter on the wall of the chimney, and the milk to be lost before he could gulp it. It might have been wholesome, of course. Maybe it had been. Maybe—
The thirst returned, redoubled. He almost screamed with it. He rolled on the chimney. He beat his head against the stone, meaning to crack his skull like a bowl.
But it was the stone which gave way. He paused in surprise.
Beyond, there was darkness. And in the darkness, far off, a miniature fleck of light.
Rarmon slumped back. He stared into the fissure beyond the stone, at the infinitesimal light. It was hallucination. The thirst was real.
Yet the light was approaching very swiftly. He could not look away. The dark caught no shine from it, no illumination came into the chimney. Then he saw why. It was not light but whiteness. And then it had form. And then it was a girl.