The Eyes of the Archon.
'Here you are then, Master Kosta, Master de Ferra.' The woman who'd waylaid Locke and Jean stepped up onto the landing between them and took them by the elbows, smiling as though they were out for a night on the town. 'Is this not a more private place for a conversation?'
'What,' said Jean, 'have we done to warrant our transport here?'
'I'm the wrong person to ask,' said the woman as she pushed them gently forward. 'My job is to retrieve, and deliver.'
She released Locke and Jean just before the front rank of the Archon's soldiers. Their own disquieted expressions were reflected back at them in a dozen gleaming bronze masks.
'And sometimes,' said the woman as she returned to the boat, 'when guests don't come back out again, my job is to forget that I ever saw them at all.'
The Eyes of the Archon moved without apparent signal; Locke and Jean were enveloped and secured by several soldiers apiece. One of them spoke - another woman, her voice echoing ominously. 'We will go up. You must not struggle and you must not speak.'
'Or what?' said Locke.
The Eye who'd spoken stepped over to Jean without hesitation and punched him in the stomach. The big man exhaled in surprise and grimaced, while the female Eye turned back to Locke. 'If either of you causes any trouble, I'm instructed to punish the other one. Do I make myself clear?'
Locke ground his teeth together and nodded.
A wide set of switchback stairs led upward from the landing; the glass underfoot was rough as brick. Flight by flight the Archon's soldiers led Locke and Jean up past gleaming walls, until the moist night breeze of the city was on their faces once again.
They emerged within the perimeter defined by the glass chasm. A guardhouse stood just on their side of the thirty-foot gap, beside a drawbridge currently hauled straight up into the air and set inside a heavy wood frame. Locke presumed that was the usual means of entrance to the Archon's domain.
The Mon Magisteria was a ducal fortress in the true Therin Throne style, easily fifteen storeys high at its peak and three or four times as wide. Layer after layer of crenellated battlements rose up, formed from flat black stones that absorbed the fountains of light thrown up by dozens of lanterns burning on the castle's grounds. Columned aqueducts circled the walls and towers at every level, and decorative streams of water cascaded down from sculptures of dragons and sea monsters set at the fortress's corners.
The Eyes of the Archon led Locke and Jean toward the front of the palace, down a wide path dusted with white gravel. There were lush green lawns on either side of the path, set behind decorative stone
i
borders that made the lawns resemble islands. More blue-robed and black-armoured guards in bronze masks stood unmoving along the path, holding up blackened-steel halberds with alchemical lights built into their wooden shafts.
Where most castles would have a front gate the Mon Magisteria had a rushing waterfall wider than the path on which they stood; this was the source of the noise Locke had heard echoing at the boat landing below. Multiple torrents of water crashed out of huge, dark apertures set in a line running straight up the castle wall. These joined and fell into a churning moat at the very base of the structure, a moat even wider than the glass-sided canyon that cut the castle grounds off from the rest of the Castellana.
A bridge, slightly arched, vanished into the pounding white waterfall about halfway over the moat. Warm mist wafted up around them as their party approached the near end of this bridge, which Locke could now see had some sort of niche cut into it, running right along its centre for its full visible length. Beside the bridge was an iron pull-chain hanging from the top of a narrow stone pillar. The Eye officer reached up for this and gave it three swift tugs.
A moment later there came a metallic rattling noise from the direction of the bridge. A dark shape loomed within the waterfall, grew and then burst out toward them with mist and water exploding off its roof. It was a long box of iron-ribbed wood, fifteen feet high and as wide as the bridge. Rumbling, it slid along the track carved into the bridge until it halted with a squeal of metal-on-metal just before them. Doors popped open toward them, pushed from the inside by two attendants in dark-blue coats with silver-braid trim.
Locke and Jean were ushered into the roomy conveyance, which had windows set into the end facing the castle. Through them, Locke could see nothing but rushing water. The waterfall pounded off the roof; the noise was like being in a carriage during a heavy storm.
When Locke and Jean and all the Eyes had stepped into the box, the attendants drew the doors closed. One of them pulled a chain set into the right-hand wall, and with a lurching rumble the box was drawn back to where it had come from. The waterfall pounded off the roof; the noise was like being in a carriage during a heavy storm. As they passed through it, Locke guessed that it was fifteen to twenty feet wide. An unprotected man would never be able to pass beneath it without
being knocked into the moat, which he supposed was precisely the point.
That, and it was a hell of a way to show off.
They soon pushed through the other side of the falls. Locke could see tliat they were being drawn into a huge hemispherical hall, with a curved far wall and a ceiling about thirty feet high. Alchemical chandeliers shed light on the hall, silver and white and gold, so that the place gleamed like a treasure vault through the distortion of the water-covered windows. When the conveyor box ground to a halt, the attendants manipulated unseen latches to crack open the forward windows like a pair of giant doors.
Locke and Jean were prodded out of the box, but more gently than before. The stones at their feet were slick with water, and they followed the example of the guards in treading carefully. The waterfall roared at their backs for a moment longer, and then two huge doors slammed together behind the conveyor box and the deafening noise became a dull echo.
Some sort of water engine could be seen in a wall niche to Locke's left. Several men and women stood before gleaming cylinders of brass, working levers attached to mechanical contrivances whose functions were well beyond Locke's capability to guess. Heavy iron chains disappeared into dark holes in the floor just beside the track the huge wooden box rode along. Jean, too, cocked his head for a closer look at this curiosity, but once past the danger of the slick stones, the soldiers' brief spate of tolerance passed and they shoved the two thieves along at a good clip once again.
Through the entrance hall, wide and grand enough to host several balls at once, they passed at speed. The hall had no windows open to the outside, but rather artificial panoramas of stained glass, lit from behind. Each window showed a stylized view of what would be seen through a real hole cut in the stone - white buildings and mansions, dark skies, the tiers of islands across the harbour, dozens of sails in the main anchorage.
Locke and Jean were escorted down a side hall, up a flight of steps and down another hall, past blue-coated guards standing stiffly at attention. Was it Locke's imagination, or did something more than ordinary respect creep into their faces when the bronze masks of the Eyes swept past them? There was no more time to ponder, for they were suddenly halted before their evident destination. In a corridor
full of wooden doorways, they stood before one made of metal.
An Eye stepped forward, unlocked the door and pushed it open. The room beyond was small and dark. Soldiers rapidly undid the bonds around Locke and Jean's wrists, and then the two of them were shoved forward into the little room.
'Hey, wait just a damn-' said Locke, but the door slammed shut behind them and the sudden blackness was absolute.
'Perelandro,' said Jean. He and Locke spent a few seconds stumbling into one another before they managed to regain some balance and dignity. 'How on earth did we attract the attention of these bloody arseholes?'
'I don't know, Jerome.' Locke emphasized the pseudonym very slightly. 'But maybe the walls have ears. Hey! Bloody arseholes! No need to be coy! We're perfectly well behaved when civilly incarcerated.'
Locke stumbled toward the remembered location of the nearest wall to pound his fists against it. He discovered for the first time that it was rough brick. 'Damnation,' he muttered, and sucked at a scraped knuckle.
'Odd,' said Jean.
'What?'
'I can't be sure.'
'What?'
'Is it just me, or does it seem to be getting warmer in here?'
3
Time went by with all the speed of a sleepless night.
Locke was seeing colours flashing and wobbling in the darkness, and while part of him knew they weren't real, that part of him was becoming less and less assertive with every passing minute. The heat was like a weight pressing in on every inch of his skin. His tunic was wide open and he'd slipped his neck-cloths off so he could wrap them around his hands to steady himself as he leaned back against Jean.
When the door clicked open, it took him a few seconds to realize that he wasn't imagining things. The crack of white light grew into a square, and he flinched back with his hands over his eyes. The air from the corridor fell across him like a cool autumn breeze.
'Gentlemen,' said a voice from beyond the square of light, 'there has been a terrible misunderstanding.'
'Ungh gah ah,' was all the response Locke could muster as he tried to remember just how his knees worked. His mouth felt dryer than if it had been packed with cornmeal.
Strong, cool hands reached out to help him to his feet; the room swam around him as he and Jean were helped back out into the bliss of the corridor. They were surrounded once again by blue doublets and bronze masks, but Locke squinted against the light and felt more ashamed than afraid. He knew he was confused, almost as though he were drunk, and he was powerless to do anything more than grasp at the vague realization. He was carried along corridors and up stairs (stairs! Gods! How many sets could there be in one bloody palace?), with his legs only sometimes bearing their fair share of his weight. He felt like a puppet in a cruel comedy with an unusually large stage set.
'Water,' he managed to gasp out.
'Soon,' said one of the soldiers carrying him. 'Very soon.'
At last he and Jean were ushered through tall black doors into a softly lit office with walls that appeared to be made up of thousands upon thousands of tiny glass cells, filled with little flickering shadows. Locke blinked and cursed his condition; he'd heard sailors talk of 'dry-drunk', the stupidity, weakness and irritability that seized a man in great want of water, but he'd never imagined he'd experience it firsthand. It was making everything very strange indeed; no doubt it was embellishing the details of a perfectly ordinary room.
The office held a small table and three plain wooden chairs. Locke steered himself toward one of them gratefully, but was firmly restrained and held upright by the soldiers at his arms.
'You must wait,' said one of them.
Though not for long; a scant few heartbeats later, another door opened into the office. A man in long fur-trimmed robes of deep-water blue strode in, clearly agitated.
'Gods defend the Archon of Tal Verrar,' said the four soldiers in unison.
Maxilan Stragos, came Locke's dazed realization, the gods-damned supreme warlord of Tal Verrar.
'For pity's sake, let these men have their chairs,' said the Archon. 'We have already done them a grievous wrong, Sword-Prefect. We shall now extend them every possible courtesy. After all... we are not Camorri.'
'Of course, Archon.'
Locke and Jean were quickly helped into their seats. When the soldiers were reasonably certain that they wouldn't topple over immediately, they stepped back and stood at attention behind them. The Archon waved his hand irritably.
'Dismissed, Sword-Prefect.'
'But... Your Honour ...'
'Out of my sight. You have already conjured a serious embarrassment from my very clear instructions for these men. As a result, they are in no shape to be any threat to me.'
'But... yes, Archon.'
The sword-prefect gave a stiff bow, which the other three soldiers repeated. The four of them hurriedly left the office, closing the door behind them with the elaborate click-clack of a clockwork mechanism.
'Gentlemen,' said the Archon, 'you must accept my deepest apologies. My instructions were misconstrued. You were to be given every courtesy. Instead, you were shown to the sweltering chamber, which is reserved for criminals of the lowest sort. I would trust my Eyes to be the equal of ten times their number in any fight, yet in this simple matter they have dishonoured me. I must take responsibility. You must forgive this misunderstanding, and allow me the honour of showing you a better sort of hospitality.'
Locke mustered his will to attempt a suitable response, and whispered a silent prayer of thanks to the Crooked Warden when Jean spoke first.
'The honour is ours, Protector.' His voice was hoarse but his wits seemed to be returning faster than Locke's. 'The chamber was a small price to pay for the pleasure of such an ... an unexpected audience. There is nothing to forgive.'
'You are an uncommonly gracious man,' said Stragos. 'Please, dispense with the superfluities. It will do to call me "Archon" .'
There was a soft knock at the door through which the Archon had entered the office.
'Come,' he said, and in bustled a short, bald man in elaborate blue and silver livery. He carried a silver tray, on which there were three crystal goblets and a large bottle of some pale-amber liquid. Locke and Jean fixed their gazes on this bottle with the intensity of hunters about to fling their last javelins at some charging beast.
When the servant set the tray down and reached for the bottle, the Archon gestured for him to withdraw and took up the bottle himself.
'Go,' he said, 'I am perfectly capable of serving these poor gentlemen myself.'
The attendant bowed and vanished back through the door. Stragos withdrew the already loosened cork from the bottle and filled two goblets to their brims with its contents. That wet gurgle and splash brought an expectant ache to the insides of Locke's cheeks.
