Murder on Kregen

Chapter two

Chapter twoFor the period of a few grains of sand dropping down either side of the hour of mid a faint wash of red and green light drifted across the topmost iron bar. For the rest of the time the barred window remained shrouded in shadow. They allowed him a lamp in the cell and had even enquired if he was one of those folk who could not bear to live under a single light but must have two sources of illumination mimicking Zim and Genodras.

The bed was hard, the floor carpetless and the ablutions primitive. Stone walls and iron bars were no novelty to Tralgan. This cell was by many moons vastly superior to the disgusting pit those Opaz-forsaken drikingers had stuffed him in when he was employed as a paktun by Kov Panral over there in Pandahem.

After the first few days the smell ceased to trouble him. This was only because he grew used to it, not because it improved. The food, coarse and not plentiful, kept him alive.

Kyr Tralgan Vorner, rightful Elten of Culvensax, needed to live, to stay alive, hungrily waiting for news from Princess Didi.

Sure she would not fail him, Tralgan was yet fully prepared for hesitation, and determined to carry his complaint to the emperor himself in Vondium.

The jailer, a stunted Fristle whose hair had been burned almost all off his left side, brought the food. He was taciturn. On the next day in his slurred sing-song voice he informed Tralgan that Pallan Nath Swantram would visit him tomorrow. Between that announcement and the Pallan’s appearance, blazing hope and black despair alternated, shaking Tralgan in their grip as a leem shakes a ponsho.

Swantram entered with a perfumed kerchief to his nose. He spread his hands. He was polite. He sympathized deeply with Tralgan’s plight. The spreading of his hands convinced Tralgan the man was attempting to be sincere, in that he had to take the perfumed kerchief away from his nose. “The news is not good, Kyr Tralgan.”

“Tell me.”

“Princess Didi declines to intervene in the case on your behalf.”

The shattering tide of despair overwhelmed Tralgan. He sagged back on the bed. He put his hands to his face and rocked backwards and forwards. Hope — all dashed!

“No!” He started up. Despair had to be overcome. “The Emperor!”

“I have, of course, my dear Kyr, immediately applied to his gracious eminence the Emperor Drak.”

Fresh hope burst up in Tralgan. “Then the emperor must see the justice of my case! He must!”

“Yes. I have the utmost sympathy for you. I have—” here Nath the Clis’s voice took on a confidential tone—” I have personally expended a considerable sum in furtherance of your cause. Gaining access to the emperor in these matters is seldom simple.”

Tralgan’s experiences abroad had given him an insight into the ways of corruption. He understood the high ones of Kregen demanded tribute to assist unfortunates. Mind you, he’d been given to understand that since the emperor’s father’s time bribery was no longer rife in Vallia. Still, this pallan understood politics.

“Thank you, pallan.”

Nath Swantram stared about the cell, kerchief well up to his scarred nose. “I had not realized, my dear Kyr, that they had placed you in such a dolorous situation. I shall have this rectified immediately. A person of your quality should not be confined here.”

“You are very kind.” Tralgan coughed. “In the matter of — ah — expenses in connection with the emperor—”

Swantram held up his hand. “When you have your estates we can talk about expenses.” After a few more pleasantries the pallan took himself off. The next day Tralgan was moved to an upper room where the twin Suns of Scorpio shone radiantly through the barred window most of the afternoon. The food improved remarkably. The bed was soft and the ablutions most satisfactory.

The effect of having someone of the pallan’s position and power on his side lifted Tralgan’s spirits. Swantram believed him! All would yet be well.

A sennight passed in which time the pallan visited every other day. He was solicitous to the extreme. His servants installed a splendid paline bush in a ceramic pot. The lush yellow berries themselves did much to cheer the prisoner up. There was no news from the emperor. Swantram counseled patience and radiated hope.

He informed Tralgan that Nalgre Lodermair strutted importantly in Culvensax, as the Elten. “I can prove the will is forged, my dear Kyr. You shall, in any event, come into your inheritance.”

“I want to see that cramph punished for his treachery.”

“You shall, my dear Kyr, you shall.”

“The thought of him, there, where my father—” Tralgan’s heavy face flushed with all the dark blood of the Vorners. “I’ll have him punished if it’s the last thing I do.”

The pallan coughed a trifle uncomfortably. “Ah — h’m — if the murders are proved, they are of necessity outside the scope of your inheritance.”

Tralgan wanted to know — by Vox! — what the pallan meant.

“Only, my dear Kyr, that whatever happens — whatever happens — your resolve should be to deny Lodermair the fruits of his treachery.”

Tralgan Vorner swore by the Sword of Kurin that if he was damned to hell he’d stop Lodermair and see him beggared and ruined.

“If I’m stalking through the mists of the Ice Floes of Sicce I’ll have Lodermair out of Culvensax! By Opaz, I’ll have him!”

On that the pallan, professing great respect for Tralgan’s resolution, took his leave. His scarred face held an expression of satisfaction. Only later, when Tralgan had calmed down a trifle, was the import of the pallan’s words borne in on him. He mulled them over. Well, then! By Vox! He would. Confident of the emperor making a decision in his favor, Tralgan yet formed an icy resolve that whatever happened he’d dislodge the usurping bastard Elten Ornol Lodermair from Culvensax.

Vorner believed that the officials would not be negligent. The Emperor Drak and his father had instilled an understanding into the various officials of the new Vallia that justice, truth and mercy must govern the land. Corruption would not be tolerated. If any of the High Ones ruling Vallia contravened those precepts, then Tralgan would have no mercy on them either. His revenge would encompass all.

The visits the pallan made to the comfortable cell increased. He would sit in one of the two chairs as Tralgan strode about the floor ranting and raving, calling upon All the Names, foaming at the injustice he had suffered. A polite, almost distant look, made the scarred face a mask through which Tralgan, far too obsessed with his own passions, had no thought to penetrate.

The mental pressure, cunningly worked on and enhanced by Pallan Nath the Clis, wrought mischief within Tralgan. He felt himself being brought low. Surely, he would abruptly burst out, time after time, surely the emperor must have sent word by now!

When that day came, when the pallan entered the cell, flanked by three pairs of Fristle guards, Tralgan Vorner’s world came to an end.

“He refuses!” Tralgan screamed. He could feel his lips writhing, his body burned, sweat varnished his face. He shook. He collapsed on the bed. This, then, was the end.

Nath the Clis said: “I have spent considerable treasure to help you. I grieve at your misfortune. But you are a man, a noble, of courage. You will see what needs to be done.”

“You’re going to kill me.” Tralgan’s words sounded like dry gravel crunched underfoot. “How?” This was, suddenly, the most important information he must learn.

“Swiftly and easily, I assure you, my dear Kyr.”

“There will be no torture?”

“Those days in Vallia are long gone. Now I want you to concentrate your mind on what to do about your great enemy Lodermair.”

“You know what I have said.”

“Yes. But he remains in possession of your estates—”

“Then he must be dispossessed. You have a plan?”

Nath Swantram explained in a smooth, even, most reasonable tone of voice. The plan was, in essence, simple. Nath the Clis would benefit from Tralgan’s will, the spurious will would be proved forged, Nalgre Lodermair would be expelled from Culvensax. Arrangements could be made for his early demise. Tralgan would have his revenge.

Such was the hatred suffusing all Tralgan’s thoughts, the rage burning in his body, he agreed. The papers were brought, the bokkertu completed, Tralgan signed. The Fristle guards witnessed.

The guards wore the insignia of Urn Vennar, their banded sleeves bright with Didi’s new colors. Their furred bewhiskered cat faces remained blank. They were paid handsomely.

The death warrant having been signed by the nazabni some time ago, explained Nath Swantram, the execution must be secret, else the strict little lady would want to know the cause of the delay. The disposal of his body concerned Tralgan. Now he was en route to the circumambient Mists where he would fight his way through the Ice Floes of Sicce to the sunny uplands beyond, he became calm. He became resolute. “You will give me proper burial?”

“Assuredly.” What the pallan did not say was that he could not possibly take the slightest risk in disposing of Tralgan. The usual means of getting rid of executed criminals was no longer open to him. The nazabni would ask damned awkward questions, for sure.

“There is a secret passage.” The pallan touched his lips with his kerchief. “You will see. Let us go.”

They went out, the guards surrounding them, and they went down.

They went down a long, long way.

“This castle is old, yet it was built upon a site even more ancient. There are no records. The builders must have been a nation old before the time of Delia, the Mother Goddess.”

That, reflected Tralgan, was a damn long time ago.

They reached eventually a corridor of rough-hewn masonry. An alcove to one side, eerily shadowed by the torches and the lamp carried by the Fristles, revealed a trapdoor, also of stone. The guards hauled on the bronze ring and with a screech that, uncomfortably, sounded far too eldritch for Tralgan’s liking, the slab lifted.

The lamp was lowered on a rope. The rope paid out a considerable length before the lamp reached the floor below. They looked down. The place was an oubliette, a gourd shaped hole in the ground, walled in by masonry. The brief circle of illumination down there revealed scattered bones and an indistinct floor. A rope ladder was thrown down. “Through there.” Nath the Clis pointed. “You, Fenrio, go down. Take the provisions and release the rope.”

“Quidang, lord,” snapped out one of the guards with a rush basket over his shoulder. He descended smartly enough and presently the empty rope’s end came up. The Fristle reappeared at the lip of the trapdoor and the pallan motioned to Tralgan.

That young man took a deep breath. If this was the way out — this was the way out. So be it, by Vox! Knowledge that Lodermair would be destroyed nerved him. He went down the ladder.

Two rungs down, he stopped, stared up, and said: “You know, pallan, I did not murder the Judge and the cadade.”

Nath the Clis made a vague gesture. Tralgan went on down.

He reached the bottom, stepped off the ladder which, instantly, whisked away aloft. “I am to go forward alone?” shouted up Tralgan.

“Of course. I know you did not kill those two. But it is too late now.” The pallan’s words bounced eerily about the oubliette. “You have your burial, as I promised you.” With a crash like the last trump, the trapdoor smashed down.

Only then Tralgan Vorner realized how he had been gulled.

The gray blank walls of the oubliette appeared to crush in on him. The stones sparkled with nitre in the light, dark streaks of moisture ran down, and he stepped upon brittle bones that snapped with the finality of death.

No clean swift execution awaited him. He would finish the provisions so mockingly provided, the lamp would gutter and be extinguished, and Tralgan Vorner, rightful Elten of Culvensax, would die the hideous death of thirst and starvation.

All that dominated his mind in that moment of awful realization was hatred. Absolute and remorseless hatred for all those who had tricked and betrayed him and brought him to this fate convulsed him with the single purpose of revenge.