“I’m sure if you think about it, you’ll realize I’m offering you a gift.”
“And all for the price of handing the world over to Phane,” Alexander said. “You make it sound like a bargain.”
“But don’t you see, Phane already has the world in his hand. You can’t beat him. I can’t beat him. He’s already won and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. Take my offer and save yourself.”
Alexander started chuckling softly. “Did you really think this was going to work?”
The Babachenko sighed. “Not really, but I had hoped, and I still do. Perhaps with better information, you’ll take my generous offer.
“You came here to kill our king, no doubt to disrupt the Lancers rampaging across Ruatha. I’m sure you, like most others, believe that the Andalian bloodline is failing and must be carefully concentrated through inbreeding to ensure that the Crown remains potent and the force lances continue to function. Of course, these are all lies. We don’t inbreed our kings to make them viable, we inbreed them to make them manageable. There are, in fact, one hundred and seventeen people in this city capable of wearing the Crown.
“Within an hour of the king’s death, the Crown was bound to another. Just long enough for your forces on Ruatha to mount an attack against our Lancers. Then, once your troops were out in the open, the power of the force lances returned. The result was nothing short of devastating. Your army is retreating in tatters.”
Alexander schooled his emotions, his father’s old lesson about good information in battle being necessary to victory playing out in the back of his mind. Because he’d believed something that wasn’t true, and acted on that belief, good men were dead … or so said the Babachenko, anyway.
“Accept defeat graciously, Alexander. Take my bargain and be done with all of this death and pain.”
“Here’s my problem,” Alexander said, “you’re lying to me. There’s something you want from me that you haven’t revealed. And even setting that aside, I’m not going to hand Phane victory. He might win, but it won’t be because I gave up.”
“I feared as much,” the Babachenko said, standing up and returning the chair to its place against the wall. “I had hoped that you would see reason. Perhaps pain will be more persuasive.”
“Really? You’ve been through the trials …” Alexander stopped short, examining the Babachenko’s colors intently. “Now, that is interesting,” he said, stepping up to the cage door. “You haven’t been through the trials, have you?”
“Nonsense, of course I’ve been through the trials,” he lied.
“How do you become a wizard, a mage no less, without surviving the mana fast?”
The Babachenko ignored his question, but his colors revealed distress. He went to the lone cabinet along the wall and removed a small glass jar, holding it up for Alexander to see. Floating within the water was a tiny blue jellyfish.
“This is a very special little creature found on the south coast of Andalia.”
“You’re threatening me with a jellyfish?”
The Babachenko chuckled. “I understand your skepticism, but it won’t protect you. This creature possesses venom that causes almost a full day of intense agony, the kind of pain men kill themselves to escape. I’ve experimented with many forms of interrogation, but I’ve never discovered anything as effective as this. Even the most ruinous torture fails from time to time, particularly with stubbornly principled subjects such as yourself, but this has never failed me.”
“There’s always a first time.”
“I want you to know that I take no pleasure in this. When we met in the slave yards, I was encouraged. And yes, I knew who you were the moment I laid eyes on you. I really thought I would be able to accomplish my goals without resorting to this kind of unpleasantness.”
“If you knew who I was, why did you let me kill your king?”
“That, I wasn’t expecting. I knew Grant was ambitious, but I never suspected he’d go against the very government that gave him his wealth and standing.”
“So I guess your vision isn’t that good after all.”
“No one can see everything,” the Babachenko said. “We’re often blinded by our own hopes and expectations. Despite my talent in the art of divination, I can’t see that which I don’t think to look for.”
“Huh … that’s the first thing you’ve said that actually makes sense.”
The Babachenko held up the jar. “Will you cooperate and allow the jellyfish to sting you or shall I call for some guards to hold you down?”
“Better call your guards,” Alexander said, stepping away from the cage door.
“I suspected as much,” the Babachenko said, opening the chamber door and motioning to the men standing outside.
Alexander stood stock-still in the middle of the cage, eyes closed yet very alert, waiting for the guards to approach. The door opened; he held. The two men approached, each of them reaching out for one of his arms. Time slowed, the coming moments clear in his mind. Alexander slapped the back of the man’s hand to his right, catching the guard’s wrist with his left hand and yanking him off balance, snatching his dagger from his belt as he stepped past and behind him, then plunging the knife into his back. The guard fell forward with a wail of surprise and pain.
The second man’s smock shimmered momentarily and then he was wearing the same wispy black plate armor that the Lord Protector wore. Alexander circled him, but he was really fixed on the Babachenko, who stood well away from the cage, but close enough.
Alexander raised his knife in challenge to the guard, then whirled, hurling the blade with all his strength, burying it in the Babachenko’s left shoulder, just high and wide of his heart. He shrieked in pain, falling to one knee.
The second guard crashed into Alexander, slamming him into the cage bars and wrenching his arm around behind his back, then the collar began to choke him, cutting off his air and his consciousness.
Chapter 25
He woke on the floor, alone. The only evidence of the struggle were a few drops of blood and an angry welt on his forearm.
“This is going to be a long night,” he said to himself, lying down on the cot and marshaling his will in anticipation of the coming onslaught.
At first, the area around the sting just felt warm, then the heat started to build, not hot like fire but hot like pepper, only this heat was spreading inside his arm with growing intensity. Within a few minutes, it felt like fire ants were eating his arm from the inside out, but it didn’t stop there. Angry, prickly, burning pain spread through his entire body, filling him up until he felt panic at the edges of his awareness, clawing its way in, trying to steal his focus and undo his will to resist. He thought of the mana fast and the trial of pain. This didn’t rise to that level of agony … at least not yet.
But it grew, expanding to envelop him in a cocoon of suffering so intense that he had to remember to breathe. Somewhere in the back of his mind he understood why men killed themselves to escape this pain, and it had only just begun.
He writhed on his cot while the pain intensified, at some point falling to the floor. Somehow it seemed worse if he tried to hold still, so he kept moving, straining and stretching his muscles until they cramped, contracting into knots of agony. It seemed like he struggled against the pain for a very long time before he felt himself slipping away into the firmament and blessed relief … until the collar started choking him and he slammed back into his pain-wracked body.
Renewed panic flooded into his mind. This kind of pain would drive his mind into the firmament, the only place it could find reprieve, and then the collar would choke him. As much as it hurt, he struggled to remain present in his own body, struggled to take one breath after another in spite of the clenched, suffocating constriction he felt around his chest and throat.
Time and again, his mind tried to slip free and he willed it back to face the torment, until he started to lose strength, started to become exhausted. Facing the very real possibility that this might be his end, he struggled against it with renewed strength, but it waned quickly, leaving him defenseless against the doom poised to consume him.