Tigana by Guy Kay (novel24 txt) 📕

men. I used my very small power perhaps five times in my life. Or six,’ he amended. ‘Once, very recently.’

‘Then there was a conspiracy against the Barbadian,’ Erlein murmured, his rage temporarily set aside as he wrestled with this. ‘And then . . . yes, of course. What did you do? Kill your son in the dungeon?’

‘I did.’ The voice was level, giving nothing away at all.

‘You could have cut two fingers and brought him out.’

‘Perhaps.’

Devin looked over sharply at that, startled.

‘I don’t know. I made my choice long ago, Erlein di Senzio.’ And with those quiet words another shape of pain seemed to enter the clearing, almost visible at the edges of the firelight.

Erlein forced a corrosive laugh. ‘And a fine choice it was!’ he mocked. ‘Now your Dukedom is gone and your family as well, and you’ve been bound as a slave wizard to an arrogant Tiganese. How happy you must be!’

‘Not so,’ said Alessan quickly from by the river.

‘I am here by my own choice,’ Sandre said softly. ‘Because Tigana’s cause is Astibar’s and Senzio’s and Chiara’s—it is the same choice for all of us. Do we die as willing victims or while trying to be free? Do we skulk as you have done all these years, hiding from the sorcerers? Or can we not join palm to palm—for once in this folly-ridden peninsula of warring provinces locked into their pride—and drive the two of them away?’

Devin was deeply stirred. The Duke’s words rang in the firelit dark like a challenge to the night. But when he ended, the sound they heard was Erlein di Senzio clapping sardonically.

‘Wonderful,’ he said contemptuously. ‘You really must remember that for when you find an army of simpletons to rally. You will forgive me if I remain unmoved by speeches about freedom tonight. Before the sun went down I was a free man on an open road. I am now a slave.’

‘You were not free,’ Devin burst out.

‘And I say I was!’ Erlein snapped, rounding fiercely on him. ‘There may have been laws that constrained me, and one government ruling where I might have wished for another. But the roads are safer now than they ever were when this man ruled in Astibar or that one’s father in Tigana—and I carried my life where I wanted to go. You will all have to forgive my insensitivity if I say that Brandin of Ygrath’s spell on the name of Tigana was not the first and last thought of my days!’

‘We will,’ Alessan said then in an unnaturally flat voice. ‘We will all forgive you for that. Nor will we seek to persuade you to change your views now. I will tell you this, though: the freedom you speak of will be yours again when Tigana’s name is heard in the world once more. It is my hope—vain, perhaps—that you will work with us willingly in time, but until then I can say that the compulsion of Adaon’s gift will suffice me. My father died, and my brothers died by the Deisa, and the flower of a generation with them, fighting for freedom. I have not lived so bitterly or striven so long to hear a coward belittle the shattering of a people and their heritage.’

‘Coward!’ Erlein exclaimed. ‘Rot you, you arrogant princeling! What would you know about it?’

‘Only what you have told us yourself,’ Alessan replied, grimly now. ‘Safer roads, you said. One government where you might have wished for another.’ He took a step towards Erlein as if he would strike the man, his composure finally beginning to break. ‘You have been the worst thing I know: a willing subject of two tyrants. Your idea of freedom is exactly what has let them conquer us, and then hold us. You called yourself free? You were only free to hide . . . and to soil your breeches if a sorcerer or one of their Trackers came within ten miles of your little screening spell. You were free to walk past death-wheels with your fellow wizards rotting on them, and free to turn your back and continue on your way. Not any more, Erlein di Senzio. By the Triad, you are in it now! You are in it as deep as any man in the Palm! Hear my first command: you are to use your magic to conceal your fingers exactly as before.’

‘No,’ said Erlein flatly.

Alessan said nothing more. He waited. Devin saw the Duke take a half-step towards the two of them and then stop himself. He remembered that Sandre had not believed that this was possible.

Now he saw. They all saw, by the light of the stars and the fire Baerd had made.

Erlein fought. Understanding next to nothing, unnerved by almost all that was happening, Devin gradually became aware that a horrible struggle was taking place within the wizard. It could be read in his rigid, straining stance and his gritted teeth, heard in the rasp and wheeze of his shortening breath, seen in tightly closed eyes and the suddenly clenched fingers at his sides.

‘No,’ Erlein gasped, once and then again and again, with more effort each time. ‘No, no, no!’ He dropped to his knees as if felled like a tree. His head bent slowly downward. His shoulders hunched as if resisting some overmastering assault. They began to shake with erratic spasms. His whole body was trembling.

‘No,’ he said again in a high, cracked whisper. His hands spread open, pressing flat against the ground. In the red firelight his face was a mask of staring agony. Sweat poured down it in the chill of night. His mouth suddenly gaped open.

Devin looked away in pity and terror just before the wizard’s scream ripped the night apart. In the same moment Catriana took two quick running steps and buried her head against Devin’s shoulder.

That cry of pain, the scream of a tormented animal, hung in the air between fire and stars for what seemed an appallingly long time. Afterwards Devin became