Betrayer's Bane Page 13

  Thillmarius looked away for a moment, “Thousands of Mordan Elders died. It has been a long time since we lost so many at once.”

  “Wasn’t there another disaster recently, a storm that damaged the Gaelyn Grove?” asked Tyrion facetiously.

  The lore-warden nodded, “Yes, but it was nowhere near as bad as this. Less than a hundred were killed during it.”

  A hundred trees, he noted mentally. As usual the She’Har did not count the loss of their children. Seeds were easily replaced. “Why was this so much worse?” asked Tyrion.

  “Storms are easier to deal with,” said Thillmarius. “With a little preparation our elders can create defenses to protect themselves from wind, or from most natural events for that matter. Even earthquakes are only a minor nuisance in most cases, but volcanic eruptions are damaging on multiple levels. They are often sudden and unexpected. Burning ash can cause fires and lava flows are certain death. For that reason, we rarely put down roots in areas that are likely to experience volcanic activity.”

  Tyrion shrugged, “I don’t know much about geology.”

  Thillmarius smiled, “I was surprised you didn’t ask me what I meant by a ‘volcanic eruption’ but you must know a few things, otherwise you wouldn’t even know the Barion word for the study of the earth.”

  A cold shock passed through him as he realized his mistake, “Lyralliantha mentioned the topic last week, but I didn’t understand her interest in it until now.”

  “It was probably the first time she had heard of such things herself, though I’m guessing someone else was required to give her the information she wanted to know,” said Thillmarius condescendingly.

  “Byovar, perhaps,” agreed Tyrion with a sense of relief.

  “It seems likely,” said the Prathion. “Let’s talk about something else. I’m sure you’ve been wondering if I had some ulterior motive to ask you over, beyond the bread, of course.”

  “It had crossed my mind,” Tyrion replied, glad to change the subject.

  “The bread was actually my primary reason,” laughed Thillmarius, “but I am curious about all the activity near your new home.”

  “Have you been spying on us?”

  “No more than usual,” said the lore-warden enigmatically. He watched Tyrion, waiting, until the conversation stretched into an awkward pause, then he sighed, “That was a joke.”

  “Oh,” he managed, at a loss for words.

  “I see I still need to work on it,” responded Thillmarius, picking up a piece of fruit from the table and taking a bite. “Honestly, though, it’s all anyone can talk about. Even the humans in Ellentrea are whispering rumors from what I’m told. What are you doing, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  “Building a new settlement,” said Tyrion plainly. “We will have to do much more before we can handle all the people of the slave camps.”

  “Some of the structures appear to be very specialized. Do you think the freed people of Ellentrea can become traders and craftsmen so easily?”

  “It will be a long road.”

  “Is that why you have been seeking the advice of so many from the wildling towns? Pardon me, I should have said, the ‘human towns’.”

  “Of course,” he answered. “I hope to convince many of the people there to relocate as well. We will need their help if we are to civilize those who were raised in the pens.”

  “You have undertaken a truly gargantuan task,” commented Thillmarius. “You have my admiration, though I worry for the safety of the townsfolk. You are well acquainted with how dangerous the people from the camps are.”

  “And how they became that way,” added Tyrion, letting his irritation show. “I have no doubt it will be a task that will take generations.” Not that the slaves can survive for generations, though I’m sure you have no qualms about letting me believe they can.

  His former trainer stood and walked away from the table. There was something about his body language that spoke of anxiety, or perhaps agitation. “Regarding that, Tyrion, there is something you should know.”

  Tyrion watched him, suddenly curious, “Oh?”

  “I shouldn’t be telling you this. My Elders have decreed that this information should be withheld, but my conscience won’t let me remain silent.” Thillmarius stopped at the other end of the table, leaning on it with both hands, “You shouldn’t interbreed with those from the slave camps.”

  “Why not?”

  “They’re a dead end, genetically speaking,” said the lore-warden. “Any children they produce will not last beyond one or two generations. If your people, particularly your women, waste their energy and resources rearing their children it could seriously deplete your population. Humankind might even go extinct.”

  Tyrion was surprised at his honesty, too surprised to even remember his anger for a moment. Standing as well he stared at the She’Har, “If that is true, why would you tell me?”

  Thillmarius’ posture was rigid with barely contained emotions, “Because I believe in our accord, not just as a matter of maneuvering for advantage, but in its spirit. What we did in the past was wrong. I cannot atone for that, but I can’t sit idly by and watch your people destroyed by my inaction, even if my elders have no problem with it.”

  “Clarify something for me. Are you saying that your elders want my kind to die out?”

  The lore-warden shook his head, “No, that are not so malicious as that, but they would not cry over it. It might even be a relief to them, a guilt easily forgotten when those who were wronged no longer exist.”

  “Won’t you be punished if they discover you told me this?” asked Tyrion, shocked at the normally unflappable She’Har’s evident passion.

  “There is no way for them to know how you learned this,” said Thillmarius, “but I would tell you either way. Some things are too important to ignore.”

  Tyrion struggled with his own emotions. Faced with such genuine concern from one he considered his mortal enemy, he had no idea how to react. He turned toward the door, “I see. I need to return home.”

  Thillmarius stepped closer, “Tyrion, wait. I know you cannot forgive me, but believe me when I say that I would be a friend to your people.”

  “You are right,” answered Tyrion, staring at the doorway, “I can’t forgive you, but I do believe you.” Damn you! He took two more steps before pausing, “Thank you.” He left the room then, but a fresh thought took him back.

  Looking through the doorway he spoke again, “Butter.”

  The lore-warden seemed confused.

  “It goes well with bread. Ask the villagers how to make it, or Kate. I think you’ll like it,” and then Tyrion left.

  The Prathion lore-warden stared after him for several minutes, pondering his parting words and wondering if they were a gift or some sort of mockery. It was only later that he wondered about the human’s lack of questions regarding the genetic sabotage of the people of the slave camps. It was almost as if he already knew, thought Thillmarius.

  ***

  Eal’estea sat in darkness. The only light came from beneath the ironbound wooden door of her stone cell. She was cold and miserable in such unnatural surroundings. Her memories of the sun felt like dreams to her now.

  “Balewgraa,” she uttered, trying to say ‘sun’ in Erollith.

  She closed her mouth again, despair washing over her. She could hear the word in her mind, the way it should sound, but her lips only produced random noises when she attempted to voice it.

  Her magesight was gone as well, which made the dim light her only source of comfort. Eal’estea had no idea how long she had been in the cell, her sense of time had become distorted with no way to see the sun. Her days were marked only by the delivery of calmuth to satisfy her hunger.

  Her captor clearly understood that without the fruit she would begin to take root, not that such a thing would do her any good in the hard darkness of her prison.

  She shivered and once again tried to create a spellweave to warm herself, but she wa
s only rewarded with pain. Spellweaving was beyond her reach now, she could not even touch aythar, much less direct it to her seed-mind.

  Eal’estea wasn’t even sure she still had a seed within her. It wasn’t something she had ever been conscious of before, but now it felt as though she had a hole in her mind, and empty dead place. Without magesight the world had lost its vitality, as if the color had gone out of it, not that she could see color in the dim room anyway.

  Her life was only endless shades of gray now. It lacked even the adrenaline that had come with her torturer. Tyrion had not visited her in days or perhaps weeks.

  She had begun having cramps some time before, though she wasn’t sure why. Unless the madman had damaged her body as well as her brain. There was no way to be sure, the pain had been so great the last time that she had passed out. Anything might have happened after that.

  Her stomach felt better today, but she still had an uncomfortable sensation of being bloated. She needed to pee too. Standing up she moved to the corner where a depression in the floor had been created. A trickle of water ran from a place in the wall and entered the bowl like area before draining away.

  Once she was done she returned to the stone bench where she had been sitting but her hand felt something cold and unpleasant there. Raising her fingers to her nose she smelled blood.

  “Urkle!” she exclaimed holding her hand away from herself and searching for something to wipe her fingers on. Of course, she already knew there was nothing. She would have to use the wall or floor, or the water that trickled in above her sanitation bowl.

  The door opened as she washed her hands.

  “Good morning, G-1,” said her captor.

  “Blaba gee morno!” she spat back angrily. My name is Eal’estea!

  Tyrion stood half a head taller and he looked down on her with a mad smile, “Still trying to talk? You’ll just frustrate yourself.”

  She glared at him as she moved away, trying to find the farthest corner of the cell from him.

  “You should be proud; you were my first success. No more of your people had to die after my work with you. I’ve refined my technique since then as well. It is still painful, but not nearly as bad.”

  Eal’estea tried to curse him but it emerged as nothing more than an unintelligible scream.

  “Your voice won’t return,” he told her. “I had to destroy that part of your brain. It was interesting to discover that the area that controls speech is so intimately connected with the portion that controls the flow of aythar.

  “I suppose it makes sense. It explains several things. I now understand why using the spoken word enhances spellcasting. Unfortunately, I had to destroy one to stop the other.”

  “Umu?!” she bleated.

  “Why?” he asked. “I couldn’t cauterize the seed-mind without stopping the flow of aythar to it first. Several of your predecessors died because of that. The seed-mind does all sorts of nasty things if it isn’t deprived of aythar before I begin cauterizing it. It was also what caused much of the pain and discomfort you experienced. Now I destroy the speech centers first, which starves it of aythar. That’s the only uncomfortable part of the procedure these days.

  “The latest ones scream very little before I am finished,” added Tyrion. “Your sacrifice has made it much better for your kin, G-2 through G-14. The ‘G’ stands for Gaelyn, in case you were wondering,” he paused, his eyes traveling over her. They stopped somewhere below her abdomen and then he glanced at the stone bench.

  Tyrion took a deep breath and felt a sense of relief at the sight of her blood. It worked. “Don’t be afraid,” he told his captive. “I was worried that it might not work, that your pain might have been a pointless torment, but it appears I was correct. This is your menarche if I am not mistaken, since I doubt you have ever experienced a menstrual cycle before.

  “You will be the mother of a new generation of humanity. The future rulers of this world will emerge from your womb.”

  Eal’estea could see the light of madness in his eyes. She wanted to back away further, but the hard stones behind her made that impossible. All she could do was shake her head in denial.

  “Don’t be like that, G-1. You’re human now, after all. Our future is your future as well.”

  Chapter 16

  Tyrion stood next to Ryan looking down on the layout of their new city. It was still a work in progress, but it was shaping up quickly.

  They were on a wooden platform, at the top of a temporary tower built from logs. Its primary purpose was to provide just such a view. Ryan used it frequently to make sure the new construction fit within his overall plan. People moved below them, mages from Ellentrea primarily, along with a few from Sabortrea as well. None of them walked slowly, Ryan’s workers moved as if they were in a hurry.

  Ian had made certain of that. Those that didn’t move with alacrity didn’t last long.

  The outlines of future streets could be seen from the tower, marked with lines of string and stretching out around the central plaza like the spokes of a wheel. Only a small section of the city had been built though, several dozen stone buildings. They varied in size and purpose, but most of them were residences.

  The slaves from the camps were building their new homes, but there were still far too few. They had almost a thousand mages working there now and despite the increase in manpower they had only managed to house a few hundred of them so far.

  “What you have looks good, but it needs to look grand,” said Tyrion. “It has to impress the villagers when they see it.”

  “It has to be functional,” argued Ryan. “We have hundreds sleeping in the field every night.”

  “You need more manpower then,” suggested Tyrion.

  Ryan shook his head, “I have too much now. I can hardly use them. Half of what they do has to be torn down and remade. It takes more time to train them than I have to spare. More would just increase the overcrowding.”

  “Don’t try to complete the city, Ryan,” cautioned Tyrion. “We just need a small piece of it, a piece that looks grand and will appeal to the villagers when they come to see it. No one will actually live in it.”

  His son stared at him in frustration, “Then why did you ask me to plan the entire thing? Why did we survey all those streets? I’ve been wasting my time!”

  “All those lines speak of the promise of the future,” said Tyrion. “When they see the beauty you have already made; the strings will show them the magnitude of your vision. Their imaginations will fill the empty field with more streets and grand constructions, so long as the part that is already there is impressive.”

  Ryan rubbed his face before staring at the setting sun. He was sweating and from the afternoon warmth and it made the stubble on his cheeks itch. “It would help if you revealed the rest of your plan. You say no one will live in it? I already have several hundred people from the slave camps sleeping in those buildings.”

  Tyrion frowned, “That won’t do. I don’t want them dirtying up the site.”

  “They’re human beings,” protested Ryan. “You can’t make them sleep on the ground forever!”

  “If you have more than you can use, start them on stasis boxes for the vault,” said Tyrion. “And stop thinking of them as human beings. They’re little more than animals. Baratti is an accurate word for them.”

  Ryan looked away, uncomfortable with the turn of the conversation. “Even as slow as they are, if we train them to make stasis boxes they’ll be able to produce thousands in a short span of time. That work won’t hold them for long.”

  “I need a lot of the boxes,” responded Tyrion.

  “How many?” asked Ryan.

  “Enough for all the villagers, and when that is done, enough for almost all of the people from the slave camps,” said Tyrion grimly. “They won’t be sleeping in this farce of a city when they’re done.”

  His son stared at him, “The vault won’t hold a hundred thousand people, even if you’re planning to box them all up.”
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  “The vault is just for people. We will put the slaves in other places—for a while anyway.”

  “None of it makes sense,” muttered Ryan. “If you’re planning to use them as soldiers they won’t do you any good in suspended animation. Why don’t we just build the city? It doesn’t have to be a fake. I know I’ve been pessimistic, but if we train them, eventually we’ll have a work force large enough to make it a reality.”

  “No.”

  Ryan gripped the handrail until his knuckles turned white, “Why not? Give it a few years and this could be a real city. From everything you’ve told me, the She’Har seem to be holding to their end of the accord. At least we could build our strength before whatever you’re planning.”

  Tyrion stared at his son, “Look at me.” He waited until Ryan had met his eyes before continuing, “A hundred thousand, even mages, is not enough to unseat the She’Har from their grip on this world. It would take many times that. And that number will never grow, those people are a dead end. Their children will all be dead within two generations. I can’t afford to leave them roaming freely, mingling with the people of the villages. Any unions between the will only decrease the chances of humanity’s survival.

  “Those slaves, those gifts from the ever kind She’Har, are poison. Even if they were loyal they would be insufficient for a war. They won’t be my soldiers. Instead I will take the poison that the She’Har have given us, and use it to destroy them.”

  “But how?” asked Ryan in exasperation. “Or do I even want to know? Will they be sacrifices for our goals?”

  “You don’t want to know,” agreed Tyrion, “but sacrifice is an appropriate term.”

  ***

  Kate made a clean cut, removing the top of the onion before turning it down and cutting it in half, bisecting it through the roots. She peeled the two halves before cutting a crosshatch pattern. It took her very little time, for her deft fingers were well practiced at the task.

  The speed meant she didn’t have to deal with the eye watering consequences, but today the smell was more pungent than usual. Before her eyes could even begin to water her stomach twisted, rebelling. Gagging she turned away and rushed from the kitchen.