six inches from Bersla’s face.
Bersla nervously backed away. ‘Holy Aracia will protect me,’ he declared, still backing up.
‘How?’ Sorgan asked. ‘You did know that she’s not permitted to kill things, didn’t you? I don’t have those restrictions. I can kill anything – or anybody – whenever I feel like it. You’ve got a very simple choice, fat man. What it all boils down to is shut up or die. The choice is entirely yours, though, but you’d better hurry. My sword’s very thirsty right now.’
Bersla flinched back, and then he ran out of the room.
Veltan was smiling. ‘I’d say that there’s a certain charm to Hook-Beak’s directness, wouldn’t you, dear sister?’
‘I will not tolerate this!’ Aracia almost screamed.
‘I think you’d better,’ Sorgan said bluntly. ‘I came here to protect you and your people – for money, of course – so let’s get down to business. I’ll start protecting right after you pay me.’
‘I will decide when – and how much,’ Aracia declared. She was obviously trying to regain control in this situation.
‘That might be very true, Lady Aracia,’ Sorgan said, ‘but I’m the one who’ll say yes or no. Be nice to me, lady, because I’m the only one willing to protect you. You’ve offended your big brother and your sister, so they won’t have anything to do with you. That sort of says that I’m the most important person in the whole wide world, wouldn’t you say?’
Aracia gave him a cold, superior sort of look. ‘How much do you want?’ she asked.
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Sorgan replied. ‘How does one hundred blocks of pure gold sound to you?’
‘That’s absurd!’
‘It is, isn’t it? Let’s make it two hundred, then.’ She stared at him, her eyes suddenly gone wide.
‘It’s entirely up to you, lady. That’s the price. Take it or leave it.’ Then he turned and walked toward the door, not even bothering to look back.
‘I’ll pay! I’ll pay!’ Aracia almost screamed.
‘That’s more like it,’ Sorgan said. ‘Now you can see just how easy I am to get along with.’
‘He leaned on her, Padan,’ Veltan told their friend the next morning. ‘Very, very hard.’
‘I wish I’d been there to see that,’ Padan said with an evil sort of grin.
‘Your whiskers aren’t quite long enough to make it safe for you to roam around in the temple, Padan,’ Sorgan told the Trogite. ‘Give them another week before you visit that holy absurdity. You’re not wearing your Trogite uniform, and that might be enough, but let’s not take any chances yet. We want you to look entirely different before you start making any public appearances.’ He scratched his cheek. ‘I think maybe you and Rabbit should talk this over. Rabbit’s got a fair idea of the horror-stories he’s going to tell Veltan’s sister, but I think you might want to add a few other stories as well. We’ve seen quite a few different varieties of the bug-people, and we’ll want to throw them all in Aracia’s face – in bits and pieces, of course. Let’s say that the first time you’ll sorta concentrate on the snake-bugs that we encountered in Zelana’s Domain. Then move on to the bug-bats and the turtle-shell bugs. Hold off on the spider-bugs for quite some time. That’s the really scarey one. I still have nightmares about people having their insides turned into a liquid that the spider drinks right out of them.’
‘It did eliminate Jalkan and Adnari Estarg, Captain Hook-Beak,’ Padan said. ‘A lot of us in Commander Narasan’s army are quite sure that was the nicest thing anybody – or anything – could have done for us.’
Sorgan smiled. ‘If I remember right, Gunda wanted to make that a national holiday down in Trog-land. I’ll be sending Ox, Ham-Hand, and Torl out as well. Maybe you should all get together and decide which awful each one of you should present to Aracia and her assorted priests. Each one of you should have a different story to wave in Aracia’s face. Remember that she was down in Veltan’s Domain, so she knows about most of the varieties of bugs. Let’s add a few new ones, though – bird-bugs, maybe, or wolf-bugs and lion-bugs. Maybe the group of you should get together and decide how you’re going to spread these stories out and make them sound real. The whole idea is to give them new awfuls every so often, and each awful should be worse than the previous ones. We want to make Aracia’s priests so terrified that they’ll be afraid to come out of the temple to see the awfuls themselves.’ Then he had a sudden idea, and he looked at Veltan. ‘You know how to make images of things that aren’t really there, don’t you?’
‘More or less,’ Veltan admitted. ‘Where are we going here?’
‘Let’s say that our scouts come back with stories about some terrifying varieties of bugs. Then, maybe a day or so later, the priests and other servants actually see those very same bugs.’
‘I can do that, yes,’ Veltan admitted. ‘I’ll need to stay quite a ways away from Aracia when I do it, though. If I’m too close to her, she’ll be able to feel what I’m doing.’
‘We’ll probably be out along the west side of her temple. That’s quite some distance from the main temple here. The higher-ranking priests will probably be hiding out in cellars and what-not, but I’m sure we’ll be able to come up with some reason for a few of the lower-ranking priests to be out there with us. If you whip up some nasty images, they’ll probably run back to Aracia yelping and squealing. Let’s keep your sister so terrified that she can’t think straight. We want her to order all of her priests to come home to the temple to join up with the ones already here. We don’t want any of her priests out there catching whiffs of the invasion of Long-Pass. Let’s make sure that Narasan can get his job done without any interference from your sister or her overweight priests.’
‘You’re getting very good at this sort of thing, Sorgan.’
‘Practice, Veltan, practice. And if worse comes to worse, we can borrow a few of the children. I’m almost positive that Eleria could scare your older sister into convulsions, if that’s what we really need. We’re pulling off a hoax here, but let’s make it seem so real that nobody who works for your sister will even dare to come out of the temple to have a look for themselves.’
It was late afternoon on a cold, grey winter day when the Victory hauled into a narrow bay where a sluggish-looking river came down through a range of low, rounded mountains.
‘This must be the place, Andar,’ Gunda said to his friend as the sailors lowered the sails of the Victory and dropped the anchor. ‘Lord Dahlaine’s map only showed one river coming down out of the mountains along this stretch of the east coast.’
