From Across the Clouded Range (82 page)

Ipid’s mind stopped. This was all his
fault. He had been so focused on his goal, on the arguments he
would make, that he had not even thought about the appearance he
was giving. And now it was too late. But even if he was known as a
traitor, he could not let that keep him from his goal. He had to
get them to that field. If they drew and quartered him, it wouldn’t
matter as long as they went to the testing when they were
done.

“
I do not know what I can
do to convince you,” he began slowly, hoping to find inspiration.
“Bruises heal, and so mine have. I can speak the invaders’
language. One of them sat at my request. All these things are true.
But it is also true that I arrived here wearing little more than
rags. You can see that I am skin and bones compared to how you used
to know me. I am speaking for them only because you turned their
other messengers away. Yet I will not call on those things to prove
myself. My loyalty, my dedication have been demonstrated time and
again. If you will believe me a traitor then that breaks my heart.
It is an almost unbearable burden, but it is light in comparison to
what I have seen these men do, in comparison to the pain, the
horror I must now carry with me, and in comparison to horror we
will all witness if I do not succeed here today.”

“
So, you
have
come to ask for our
surrender?” Director Ahern yelled. “You wish to spare us from the
ravages of your new masters.” The room again burst into shouts and
confusion. Oban beat them down with his gavel.

By the Order, wrong
again!
Ipid cursed himself.
I am making this too easy for them. Curse my slow
mind
. He took a deep breath. “I have come
to do exactly the opposite,” he yelled. “I have come to ask you to
fight, to fight with everything you have
for
everything you have.”

The hall erupted. Every director
yelled at once, and Oban beat the table nearly to collapse to bring
the meeting to order. Several directors raised their crests to be
recognized. Oban ignored them all. “That is what we plan to do,
Lord Ronigan. So if that is all you have to say, you can return to
your camp. Our numbers are not great, but the walls of Thoren are
still strong, the armory is well stocked, we can be resupplied from
the river, and you will never get your siege engines through the
streets of the outer rings to bring them against the main wall. We
will hold for a long time here, and while we hold, the nations will
band together to meet you and your allies.”

There was no outburst this time, just
a mumbled agreement and collective shaking of heads. Ipid pounded
his fist on the podium in frustration trying to think of a way to
convince them, but it was Oban who broke the stalemate. “I think we
have heard enough, Ipid. Return to your allies and tell them that
we are not interested in surrender. Tell them that we are prepared
to fight and will continue fighting until every brick of our walls
has been leveled. Go now. We have much to discuss.”

Oban motioned to the guards to escort
them from the room, but Ipid could not let it end here. “Wait!” He
yelled and held his hands out to fend off the guards. “You are
wrong about my motives. Believe what you will about my allegiances,
but at least hear my message.”

Guards had a hold of his arms and were
preparing to drag him from the room. They had surrounded Härl with
lowered spears. The large man had stood. He eyed them warily. He
looked to Ipid for some indication of what was happening, but Ipid
had no time to explain.

“
Hold!” Oban yelled at the
guards. “Ipid is right. We have not yet heard the message from his
new masters.” He looked down the sides of the long table and
chuckled. “Perhaps the Darters plan to surrender to us.” The other
directors laughed at the suggestion.

The guards released Ipid and moved
back from Härl. Ipid took a few seconds to straighten his clothes
after the rough treatment. Finally, he faced the directors. His
eyes were fixed on Oban. “What I am going to tell you is going to
sound absurd, but you must believe it is true.”

“
Let us hear it, and we
will determine whether or not to believe it.”

“
The
Darthur
, that is what they are
called, have a custom that they call the Eroth Amache. It means
Battle of Testing. It is their belief that they must test the
people of each nation they conquer, must test their honor in
particular.” A quick glance along the table showed that only about
half the directors were listening, but Ipid did not care. Oban was
his lone objective. “The Darthur have decided that the Battle of
Testing for the Unified Kingdoms will take place here, at
Thoren.”

He paused to gather himself. Another
director sitting near Ahern drew the breath to speak, but Oban cast
him a withering glare before he made a sound. “What does that
matter to us?” he interjected in the director’s stead.

“
It means that you and all
the men you can muster must meet the Darthur on the common lands
the morning after tomorrow to fight for the lives of every man,
woman, and child in the Unified Kingdoms.” Ipid braced himself for
the expected explosion.

It came, but Director Ahern’s voice
rose above it. “So that is your angle, is it Ipid? You will lure us
out of our walls so we can be crushed by your allies?”

“
That’s enough, Geoffrey,”
Oban cut in. “I warned you about. . . .”

“
It is not my
angle
.” Ipid interrupted
Oban this time. “It is a fact. If you believe that I am in league
with the invaders then believe that I speak for them. If you do not
meet them, the people of the Unified Kingdoms will be judged to
have no honor. Those without honor are considered a scourge by the
Darthur, a scourge that must be eradicated. They will kill
everyone. They will burn every city. We will all die, you, me, the
boys they have captured, your wives, children, every person in the
Kingdoms. They will kill us all.” Ipid trailed off as his emotions
got the best of him so that the last was little more than a
whisper.

“
But you must see, Ipid,”
a soft voice spoke this time. It came from the Directorate’s oldest
and, in many ways, most esteemed member, the Grand Duke Meretz
Oscante, the man who would have been their ruler if his grandfather
had not signed the treaty that had unified the Kingdoms. He was the
longest tenured member of the Directorate, had vast holdings, and
was considered a grandfather to the city, so his opinion carried
great weight, even with Oban. “You must see that this all sounds
very self-serving, at least for the invaders. We are drawn from the
city. They take it without a single building burning and use it as
a fortress and supply center. It is all just too
convenient.”

The other directors muttered their
assent.

“
I have to agree, Ipid,”
another voice spoke. This was from a small, balding man, Malom
Thickery, Ipid’s neighbor and the father of the page that had
escorted them. He rarely spoke in meetings and always voted with
Oban, so his voice drew the attention of the entire room. “As
terrible as such a fate sounds, we have no reason to believe such
threats. We have heard stories of the brutality of the invaders,
but I cannot even conceive of such disregard for life as you speak.
The Order would never allow it.”

“
You have not seen what I
have seen.” Ipid spoke under his breath. His head was turned down
with growing frustration.

“
Perhaps you should tell
us then.” Director Ahern laughed, meaning to make a joke of Ipid’s
position.

Ipid latched on to the opportunity. “I
saw an entire village slaughtered because they were inconvenient.”
He locked eyes with Duke Oscante. “The Darthur did not want to
spare the twenty men from their army of thousands that it would
take to subdue the village, so they killed every living person.
They gathered the people of Gurney Bluff into the green and
butchered them. Men, women, children, all of them, dead. I dug the
grave that now holds them, dug it with these hands.” His voice
began to crack. Tears rolled down his cheeks. The faces of the
people of Gurney Bluff played before his eyes. “If you had been
there, you would never doubt my conviction to see these monsters
destroyed. You would never doubt my allegiance. But you have not
seen. You have not felt their cruelty, have not heard the cries of
the boys they worked, starved, and tortured to the edge of sanity
and death, have not nursed them back to health. You have not dug
graves to house the innocent. You have not seen
anything.

“
But I have seen, and all
I can do is beg you to believe me, beg you to trust my tears.” Ipid
collapsed to his knees. He could not see for the tears that blurred
his vision. His body was wracked with sobs. “I cannot dig any more
graves. I cannot bury any more children. If you do not believe me,
then arrest me, try me, execute me. I will go without struggle. I
would welcome that before I see another massacre like Gurney
Bluff.” He doubled over prostrate before the directors and wept
openly. Stunned silence answered his tears.

“
Bravo! Bravo!” Director
Ahern mockery broke that silence. Again, he slowly clapped. “You
are truly amazing . . . .”

“
Shut up, Geoffrey.”
Oban’s words were ice.

His chair sighed as his extraordinary
weight rose from it, and he strode around the table to where Ipid
was kneeling. He bent over through much effort and put his hands on
the back of his friend. “Rise, my friend. What by the Holy Order
has befallen us? What horrors you must have witnessed. Of course, I
believe you. Your scars do not show on your skin, but to any man
with eyes they are as clear as day.” Oban helped Ipid to his feet
while patting his back reassuringly. He ignored the directors, who
were whispering feverishly at the display.

When they were standing, he yelled to
the doorman, “Get me a page!” The man jumped then ran through the
door. He returned a moment later with a boy slightly older than the
one who had escorted Ipid.

Almost before he was through the door,
Oban shouted, “Boy, fetch the valati. Tell him that he is needed
urgently.” The boy jumped at the summons and ran from the room
without so much as a peep. The huge director found the doorman
again. “Is Defours still out there playing with his maps?” The
doorman nodded. “Then get him in here too. And send someone to the
docks. Have them find and seize the fastest boat there. It will
carry word of our decision to the Chancellor in Wildern. Hurry now!
We have no time to lose.”

Ipid was too stunned and disoriented
by his outlay of emotions to realize what was happening. “I heard
about Gurney Bluff,” Oban whispered in his ear. “Not everyone was
killed. A survivor carried word directly to me, but I have kept it
quiet for fear of starting a panic. I knew that you could not have
been part of that, knew deep down that you would never ally
yourself to anyone capable of that, but now I know for sure.” He
sighed deeply. “If you believe we must fight, then fight we
will.”

#

While they waited for the valati, Oban
told the other directors what he knew about Gurney Bluff. Ipid sat
on one of the benches away from Härl and watched. He was so drained
that he could barely move and was at least somewhat embarrassed by
his display. Many of the directors still watched him with mixed
emotions, but he was confident that he had at least one
believer.

When Valati Lorenzo finally arrived,
Oban called the session, which had gone into recess for a light
dinner, back to order. The Chairman asked Ipid to tell his story in
as much detail as possible and ordered the other directors to hold
their tongues. Ipid did not disappoint. Over an hour of undisturbed
speech, he told the directors everything he knew about the invaders
and their leader; gave his account of what had happened in Randor’s
Pass, Gurney Bluff, and the other western villages; and disclosed
his influence over the invaders’ strategies. The directors sat in
thrall of his words until he began to describe the stoche and the
magic that had brought him to Thoren the night before. Oban almost
screamed himself hoarse to restore order over the cries of
disbelief and accusations of blasphemy that erupted from the
directors, but not even Oban could silence his fellows when Ipid
recounted his conversation with Eia that morning and her claim that
the te-am’ eiruh were the Lawbreakers of legend.

Through all the yelling, Ipid could
tell that the consensus of the directors had changed from believing
him treasonous to believing he was either insane or extremely
gullible. He had anticipated this as part of his original strategy
and waited patiently for the shock to run its course. Likewise,
Oban had given up on trying to control the meeting in an apparent
hope that the directors would scream themselves out of voices. He
sat back in his chair and huffed as men shouted and pointed around
him.

Much to their surprise, it was Valati
Lorenzo who somehow subdued the directors. “Excuse me. If I may,”
he said in a soft voice that the directors should not have even
been able to hear. Somehow, they all grew silent. Valati Lorenzo
had been made the voice of the Holy Order in Thoren just a few
months ago in what was still considered a very controversial
decision by the Church. He was sent from the Hall of Understanding
in Sal Danar by the Xi’ Valati himself after the death of the
previous valati, a local man who had served for over thirty years.
It was an extraordinary snub to many important counselors and had
created quite an uproar in the city. The fact that the new valati
was a foreigner – and from the Empire at that – only exacerbated
the situation and meant that most of the directors did not trust
him. Through his own sources, Ipid had heard that Lorenzo was
highly regarded in the Hall of Understanding as a scholar, but that
just made his appointment to a largely administrative post in the
distant Kingdoms even less explicable.