I thought about telling him I didn't see a lot to smile about, but I didn't. Instead, I lunged forward and bit into his mouth.
His scream, transmitted by our contact, shook my jaws. Blood spurted. Fists struck repeatedly and desperately against my skull and neck. His long red hair came loose and the beaded ends whipped about my head. At last, he tore away, roaring. I retched out a mouthful of blood and a good fleshy lump of his lower lip.
His gloveless hand clamped around his torn mouth, Locke stumbled back, enraged, and then hurled himself at me. He kicked hard into my belly and hip, and punched me in the cheek so forcefully, it nearly snapped my spine apart.
Then I felt the needles stab in between my ribs on my left side, and breathless agony enfolded me.
Locke was screaming obscenities into my face. Once again, pain blacked me out.
I came back in a rush of excruciating discomfort and gasping breath as Urisel wrenched Locke off me and threw him across the cell.
'I want him alive!' Urisel bawled.
'Look what he did!' Locke complained incoherently through blood and torn lips.
'You should have been more careful/ said Oberon Glaw, stepping forward. He leaned down to study me, and I gazed back into his haughty, leonine face, bearded, powerful, commanding.
'He's halfway to death/ Oberon said with annoyance. 'I told you fools I wanted answers/
'Ask me yourself/1 gasped.
Lord Oberon raised his eyebrows and stared at me. 'What brought you to my house, inquisitor?'
The Pontius/ I replied. It was a gamble, and I wasn't hopeful, but there was always a chance that the very word might auto-slay them as it had done Saemon Crotes in the Sun-dome on Hubris. As I suspected, it didn't.
'You came from Hubris?'
'I stopped Eyclone's work there/
'It was aborted anyway/ Lord Oberon stepped back from me.
"What is the Pontius?' I asked, trying and failing to focus my will. The pain in my body was overpowering.
'If you don't know, I'm hardly going to tell you/ said Oberon Glaw.
He looked round at Urisel, Locke and the pipe-smoker.
'I don't think he knows anything about the true matter. But I want to be certain. Can you be trusted to work efficiently, Locke?'
Locke nodded. He approached me again, flexing the needle glove, and slid a needle into my head behind my ear.
My skull went numb. It became almost impossible to concentrate.
'My index needle is lancing right into your parieto-occipital sulcus/ Locke crooned in my ear, 'directly influencing your truth centre. You cannot lie, no matter what. What do you know of the true matter?'
'Nothing…' I stammered.
He jiggled the needle and pain ignited inside my head.
'What is your name?'
'Gregor Eisenhorn/
Where were you born?'
'DeKere's World/
Your first sexual conquest?'
'I was sixteen, a maid in the scholam…'
Your darkest fear?'
'The man with blank eyes!'
I blurted out the last. All were true, all involuntary, but that last one surprised even me.
Locke wasn't finished. He jiggled the needle, and pierced the back of my neck with others so that my body went into paralysis and ice flowed down my veins.
What do you know of the true matter?'
'Nothing!'
Without wanting to, I began to weep with the pain.
Gorgone Locke continued to question me for four hours… four hours that I know about. Beyond those I recall nothing.
I woke again, and found myself lying on a cold rockcrete floor. Lingering pain and fatigue filled every atom of my being. I could barely move. At that time in my life, I had never felt such an extremity of pain and despair. I had never felt so close to death.
'Lie still, Gregor… you're with friends…' That voice. Aemos.
I opened my eyes. Uber Aemos, my trusted savant, looked down at me with a soulful expression even his augmetic eyes couldn't hide. He was bruised about the face and his good robe was torn.
'Lay still, old friend/ he urged.
You know me, Aemos/1 said, and slowly sat up. It was quite a task. Various muscle groups refused to work, and I came close to vomiting.
I looked around blearily
I was lying on the floor of a circular rockcrete cell. There was a hatch on one side, and a cage-gated exit opposite it. Aemos was crouched near me, and Alizebeth Bequin, her gown ripped and dirty, hunched behind him, staring over at me with genuine concern. Away across the cell stood Hel-dane, arms folded, and behind him cowered the guilder Macheles and the four other Guild Sinesias envoys who had escorted us. All of them looked pale and hollow eyed as if they had been weeping. There was no sign of Betancore.
