Captive Scorpio

Seventeen

I looked down into lustrous brown Vallian eyes. I saw that glowing face. I saw and I could not understand.

Almost, almost, then, I was a dead man.

But the longsword, of itself, sliced and slashed and the two Chuliks screamed and spun away, bloody wrecks.

The blood dripped down my face from the razor slashings of the steel claw.

“Dayra?”

Zankov screamed again: “Now is your chance, Dayra! Slay the rast and have done.”

I stepped back, out of the lethal swing of the claw and kicked Zankov in the side of the head. He slumped. My left hand reached for the last hooked chain.

“So mother was right, after all, and these fools wrong,” she said, this girl, this Ros the Claw who was my little daughter Dayra. “For no other man could do what you have done and lived.” She lifted the steel tiger talons on which my blood glimmered darkly. “You are a Hyr-Jikai.”

“Only a fool would do what I have done,” I said.

“That is sooth.”

“You have fallen among evil company — Dayra. Come with me. I must go and see if Delia your mother is safe.”

“She will be. I have given orders-”

I broke in, exasperated, still dizzy with the shock. “Don’t you know what kind of villain this rast is? He means to kill all of us — all the family-”

She shook her head. “Not true.”

“If only I had known. . They said you were arriving today.”

“How do you know that? I do as I please. I take orders from no one — from no man — least of all from a father I have never known.”

This could be resolved later, for now soldiers pressed on and time was on a short fuse. I gripped the harsh steel hook ready to slip it over the ring. “Come with me, Dayra. Your mother-”

“You are not fit to speak her name! Leave her out of it.”

An arrow pitched into the blood-soaked ground. Another punched through the fabric of the airboat by my head.

“You must hurry, Dayra, or they will shaft you, too.”

“Go, go away! Run! You have been running all your life so go on running. You betrayed us all and you will continue to betray us, no matter what you say. Go before I slash your eyes out.”

But since she had understood that I, at last, knew who she was, she had made not a single move to attack me as she had been so savagely doing before.

A quick glimpse of booted feet and the glint of a bladed tail past the keel of the flier warned me I could dally no longer. If this wayward sprite of mine would not come home with me, she would not. And if I tarried here arguing I would be dead. I gripped the hooked chain fiercely in my left hand and flicked the longsword about and so deflected an Undurker arrow.

“Then I bid you Remberee, Dayra. I shall tell your mother I have seen you.” The metal hook lifted. Around me now the guards were closing in, confident I was at last done for. There were very many of them. I could not slay them all. But not a one of them showed anxiety to be first. With the incongruity of the situation strong upon me, I said: “Take care of yourself — daughter.”

She spat at me, and slashed the claw and I wondered as I lifted the hook if she would, finally, have tried to do for me at last.

The flier jerked away as the last chain came free. Gripping the hook I was wrenched aloft, dangling and swinging under the keel of the voller, hurtling away and up into the air. A few arrows winged after me; but the voller leaped away so fast and gained height so rapidly the arrows fell away uselessly. Like a parcel of laundry at the end of a rope I was whisked up. Climbing the chain proved tricky; but without sheathing the longsword I managed that maneuver and tumbled over the leather-wrapped coaming. Presently I took the flier under command and set the controls for full speed for Vondium. Udo and Ranjal and Zankov — if his headache improved — would send the pursuit after me; but I had chosen exceeding well and the voller outran all pursuit.

When I considered what I had just discovered I was aghast I was beset by confusion, unable to believe it had really happened, and yet knowing that what Dayra said was true, true, damn the black Star Lords to hell and beyond.

The only sane course for me to follow was to do what I could for Vallia. I could not put out of my mind that terrible experience — how her claws had slashed — but I could attempt to comfort myself with the reflection that she had lived this long without me and so could live a while longer until I managed to persuade her I was not entirely the rogue, the cheat, the liar, the deceiver she dubbed me. I was those things; but not in the way she meant.

That was a dark and dismal flight back to Vondium. The claw cuts in my face could be cleaned up and in time they would heal without a scar; but the real scars on me they would leave might never heal. My own daughter! But — at the end, she had stood back. She had made no further effort to stop me. She had bid me go.

Better, I suppose, to be thrown out than to be killed, to a pragmatic kind of fellow, although the more sensitive might well dramatically prefer death. To me, they are the fools, for although one can see their artistic point of view, they do rather show their contempt of the gift of life, which is not to be taken lightly. Perhaps a taste of the Heavenly Mines would cure them. .

So I forced myself to look at this unnatural situation with Dayra’s eyes. She was perfectly entitled to her view of me. I fancied the company she kept could be revealed to her as the bunch of villains they were and their dark purposes destroy her belief in them. That was one area in which she could be straightened out. That was general. In the private and family quarrel she had with me — that was something else again.

Even then, in those bleak moments of near despair, I once again forced myself to consider the concept that Dayra’s companions were honorable people, working for what they truly believed in, and seeing Delia and the emperor and me and the family as villains overripe for the chopping. It was difficult. But, as Zair is my witness, I tried.

And, by Vox, it was not too difficult where the emperor was concerned, either. . All these worries must for the moment be pushed aside. However difficult that might be, I had to realize that all Vallia could be drenched in blood. I had to do what I could to prevent that. Also, it would not hurt to remind myself I had two other daughters, not to mention three sons, to worry over. . All the same, the story of how Dayra had spurned the Sisters of the Rose and taken the name of Ros and learned the trick of using the Claw and become involved with Zankov and that gang would make a fascinating task to unravel and learn. Like me, she used aliases as it suited her. In that, at the least, the very littlest least, she was like me.

It was damn small comfort.

Vondium hove into view and the place was burning in many areas, the fierce orange flames reflecting in the canals, the proud buildings on their hills and islands burning and collapsing. I stared, shocked back to present crises.

The long straggling black fingers of fugitives clogged roads leading away from the capital, the canals lay deserted with all the narrow boats gone, and not a flier sped through the sky apart from my own sole voller I had stolen from Udo.

The palace was not burning and a Pachak guard ringed it to prevent looting. The devoted loyalty of the Pachaks through their honor system of nikobi was never better demonstrated. I landed in the great kyro before the palace. A guard checked me quickly and efficiently — those guards again, men, just men, doing a job, and faithful, not mere lay figures to be spitted and chopped and cast down all bloody and forgotten — and I was led off to their Chuktar.

A few quick glances told me that all the Pachaks hired by the emperor for duties in various wings of the palace had been collected together. Even the Pachaks from the wing given over to the use of Delia and myself, for with the Chuktar stood our Pachak paktun Jiktar, Laka Pa-Re. He greeted me warmly. The Chuktar, the highest of the military ranks apart from princes and kovs and generals and kings and their like, was Pola Je-Du. He looked more haggard than I liked.

“Lahal, prince. The situation, as you see, is ripe.”

“Lahal, Pola Je-Du. Your orders?”

“To guard the palace. Since the defeats the emperor-”

“Defeats? I had heard of one.”

“The Hamalese fought well, so I am told. The Vallian army was defeated in detail. The Crimson Bowmen fought brilliantly, those that marched. The others-”

I looked at Laka Pa-Re, remembering how he had warned me that the guards were being bribed. Laka nodded. “The guards who took bribes were weeded out. Naghan Vanki saw to that. But the damage had been done.”

“And the various elements disaffected in the capital and the provinces took the chance to rise. There has been much mischief, prince.” The Pachak Chuktar pulled his moustache. Smoke billowed up from a dome across the kyro and the distant sounds of shouting and the crashings of masonry reached us, thin and attenuated. “The emperor marched out with all that was left to him. For us, we guard the palace.”

Not for the first time I wondered how the emperor had ever remained emperor for so long. With these Pachaks a great deal might be done — and then I reconsidered. There were perhaps five hundred of them. Against the Hamalese army, against the mobs and the irregulars and the mercenaries of the factions, would they have made all that much difference? The Pachaks would fight in their superb fashion when the first looters arrived with whichever army reached Vondium first. As a reserve, as a hard core, they would serve. Maybe the emperor was still the crafty old devil I thought him.

“And the Princess Majestrix?”

The question was followed by a general shaking of heads in the small, round, unadorned Pachak helmets. No one had any news of the Princess Majestrix.

More information was given me — of the arrests of men hitherto considered loyal to the emperor, of the way Queen Lushfymi more and more obsessed him to the exclusion of all else, of the riots, the burnings and lootings and killings, of the exodus from the capital as the various hostile armies closed in, Hamalese, rebels, insurgents. And I knew a fresh and powerful host inspired by a revived corpse could now be added to that number. .

It seemed to me that Phu-si-Yantong was drawing ever closer to his insane dream. But he could not control all the foes of Vallia advancing on Vondium. In that, paradoxically, lay a slender hope. In that wide and grandiose kyro with its surrounding colonnades and superb architecture the slender line of Pachaks ringing the palace and the small knot of officers all looked fragile, alone, gray chalk marks against the brilliance. In the radiance of the suns a chill wind blew dust across the flagstones. A confused noise drew our attention to the far side of the square. The sound of a multitude, the ragged tramp of feet, the jingle of weapons, the creaking of carts, made the officers walk along the ranks, tautening up their men. The Pachaks moved with the quiet, well-ordered air of men waiting for business. They were ready. They would earn their hire.

Calmly the Chuktar gave a last few orders. I said: “I will stand and fight with you, Chuktar Pola Je-Du, if you will.”

“I will it so, prince, and deem it an honor.”

No victorious army of irregulars, no raging army of mercenaries broke into the square. A beaten army debouched and began to straggle across the stones. They were wounded, and dusty, wrapped in bloody bandages, exhausted. At their head mounted on a drooping-headed zorca rode the emperor. This was an army shattered and near-destroyed.

Krahnik-drawn carts brought in the seriously wounded. A few flags drooped here and there, ripped and bloodied standards. A couple of squadrons of totrix cavalry retained their guidons. But for all else these men formed a mere mob.

The emperor rode slowly toward the group of high ranking Pachak officers. At his side, mounted on a pure white zorca, rode Queen Lushfymi. She wore armor. Somehow, it did not look absurd; gilded breastplate, flaunting helmet crowned with the red and yellow of Vallia, a jingling assortment of weapons buckled about her and her mount. I stood, grim-faced, prepared to be exceedingly nasty. Eighteen

The Hand of Phu-Si-Yantong

In the emperor’s private inner sanctum he placed his goblet of wine on the polished table and banged a fist down on his knee.

“I’m not finished yet, son-in-law, so don’t take that tone with me. Queen Lushfymi thinks we have as good a chance as any of defeating these rasts from Hamal.”

Only a few of us had gathered here after the shattered remnants of the army had been attended to as best we could. The Pachaks still stood guard. Now Queen Lush, half a dozen of the pallans who remained, Chuktar Wang-Nalgre-Bartong and myself conferred with the emperor. The news was as bad as it could be without being total disaster. In detail all the forces arrayed against the foes of the emperor had been defeated.

“Kov Layco Jhansi will yet bring in a victory, son-in-law. Once he disposes of these scheming rasts of Falinur the rest will see they had better toe the line.”

“Falinur?” I forced myself to remain calm.

“Aye! The kovnate you made me give to your so-called friend Seg Segutorio. They have risen like flies and march to war — and where is this precious Seg Segutorio, Kov of Falinur? Skulked off as you do

— or does he lead his host against me?”

The emperor’s hand curled in a claw about the stem of the goblet. I couldn’t tell him that Seg had been hurled back to his home in Erthyrdrin after his baptism in the Sacred Pool — banished like all my friends to their homes. So, instead, I said: “And what of Vomanus? His Kovnate of Vindelka marches with Falinur. They quarrel over Vinnur’s Garden, so-”

“Vomanus? That great rascal. Where is he you may well ask.”

I judged that many a wight had taken himself off from the capital in these troublesome times; but I felt disappointment with Vomanus. He was a careless fellow, true; but he was half-brother to Delia. . All the time we spoke and argued and planned meaningless plans in the face of the catastrophe, Queen Lush sat upright, toying with her wine, looking at the emperor fixedly. When he glanced fondly at her she would smile. She wore a simple robe of a deep yellow, and not a scrap of jewelry. She looked different from the easy, casual, bitchy minx I had left here.

“Layco Jhansi will subdue the central provinces. The southwest awaits events. The southeast-” Here the emperor looked pointedly at Lykon Crimahan, the Kov of Forli. Him you have met before. Now he was the Pallan of the Treasury, the new pallan, for Pallan Rodway had long ago passed away and the last incumbent suffered from a cleavage where his neck should be.

Forli, often called the Blessed Forli, lies up an eastern tributary of the Great River and extends to the east coast opposite northern Veliadrin. Lykon Crimahan had no love for me. Yet, I believed he hewed to his own faith with the emperor, evil though he might be, and had the welfare of Vallia at heart, even though he had tried to obstruct my plans to build a great aerial fleet. So I waited for Crimahan to speak, ready with bitter, mocking words of my own.

“I can vouch for Forli, majister. As for the rest — they attack my lands. I would be there to fight for them; but-”

“Your duty is here, at the emperor’s side,” said Queen Lush.

Her face was bright, her eyes alive with passion. I looked away from her. Her influence, I felt sure, along with many other fighting men, had weakened the emperor, and yet the old devil was full of fight, firm in his resolve to go on with the struggle.

“And, Lykon Crimahan,” I said, “where is the great fleet of skyships I wanted to build? Are your friends in Hamal pleased at your handiwork?”

He would have drawn his rapier and rushed on me; but the emperor put up a hand and bellowed, and protocol saved the fool.

“I am loyal to the emperor and Vallia, prince majister! I sit still under no insults-”

“Still, Kov Lykon. Remember the skyships we do not have when those from Hamal cast down their firepots upon the city.”

“Our varters will shoot them down,” said the emperor. He believed it, and he had taken part in the Battle of Jholaix.

“The Northeast is solidly against you-” I began.

“That I know.”

“They fly an army here.” I told them what I had learned. Barty had not reached Vondium. Probably his flier had broken down. In these last dark hours that witnessed the death of an empire Barty Vessler must take his own chances. Maybe he had gone home. I did not speak of my daughter Dayra who was called Ros the Claw.

“Trylon Udo. Very well. I have a high tree ready for him. As for this Zankov, he can be dealt with when they get here. I am the emperor, and I understand these foolish plots. By Vox! My emissaries are already hiring thousands of paktuns for me from overseas.”

“By the time they arrive all will be over,” said Chuktar Wang-Nalgre-Bartong. He licked his lips. He was a Bowman of Loh and he did not like to say what he had to say. “My men are loyal. They have been selected-”

“Aye,” put in a pallan, fierce and intolerant and with a wounded arm in a sling. “The rest of the rasts took bribes.”

The Chuktar was the last in a line of commanders of the Crimson Bowmen. He had been vouched for by Naghan Vanki, the emperor’s spymaster. Now he roused himself again to say: “We fought. We fought as Bowmen of Loh can fight. But we were ambushed in detail — do not ask me how for it is a mystery. Our plans were divined. We had no chance. So, I repeat and with sorrow, I see no other course for us than honorable capitulation.”

The Vallians glared at him. He was a mercenary, a hyr-paktun with the pakzhan glittering golden at his throat.

Softly, the emperor said: “And Chuktar, when you capitulate in all honor and take service with our foes, what becomes of us?”

“That is the way of the fall of empires,” said Chuktar Bartong. Again he licked his lips. “It is all one in vaol-paol.”

The wrangling went on. These men were like children whistling in the dark to keep their courage up. All except the emperor. There was about him a spirit I had not expected. He was far from cowed, disdaining defeat, eager to resume the struggle. A calm and supreme confidence radiated from him. In those burs in his private sanctum as we planned against catastrophe, I understood how he could be the father of Delia.

The Chuktar of the Crimson Bowmen would from time to time shake his head and repeat: “We had no chance. All our movements were known in advance. No chance at all.”

“And the northwest?” demanded the emperor briskly.

“Racter country,” said a pallan with the exhausted and yet vicious air of a rast trapped in a spring cage.

“The last reports remain unmodified. The Black Mountains and the Blue Mountains are bathed in blood. What will happen no one knows.”

I felt the pang of that. The Black Mountains was Inch’s kovnate, and the Blue Mountains — I forced myself to ask for details. All that was known was the northwest had tried to raise a host and the Blue Mountain Boys and the Black Mountain Men had barred the advance. After that, silence. So the schemes of the Racters had not gone as they planned, then. . The black and whites were waiting quietly in other areas, waiting to step in and take up the pieces after the holocaust. Well, the onkers, they did not know that Phu-si-Yantong was there to forestall them.

For, make no mistake, I felt, I sensed — I almost knew — that Phu-si-Yantong was this minute employing other agents to wreak his will in Vallia quite apart from the duped tools of his I had so far encountered.

So far there had seemed no good purpose in telling the emperor the truth of this Wizard of Loh. He would be best employed fighting each threat on the ground uncluttered by an overall fear. And, anyway, it was most likely he would not believe me.

“All known Racters have left the city,” said Lykon Crimahan. His jaws rat-trapped shut, and his thin fuzz of dark beard below his chin, the prominent cheekbones, the malicious intelligence of his dark eyes, all conveyed the seething frustration and despair in him. At times of troubles before, he had contrived to be away on his estates. This time he was here, in the capital, Pallan of the Treasury; and this time the trouble was likely to be the biggest of the lot and final. That, at the least, was good for a laugh. Now he opened that rat-trap mouth again to say with some evil satisfaction: “The Fegters rose to loot and burn and many of them were killed.” He looked at me. “Your trip to the northeast was fortuitous, prince majister.”

“Had I been here,” I began. And then stopped. To boast would be criminal and foolish — and also useless; Kov Lykon saw my hesitation, and misconstrued it. I had been about to say something entirely different from what he expected.

But I wouldn’t tell this bright malicious rast that concern over my daughter Dayra might have cost an empire. It might have. And, again, it might not have; for could I have done any differently from what the emperor and his advisers and the Presidio had done? The forces arrayed against us were too strong. As I suspected had been the case with all the war councils the emperor had been holding, we broke up with nothing decided.

Only one thing remained clear. We would go on fighting for as long as we could. But that time was short and was growing shorter with every bur that passed.

Just before we rose to leave, with the emperor already turning to Queen Lush and smiling at her, holding out his hand, I said: “I’d like you to consider certain — speculations — I shall lay before you.” I’d been about to say facts; but that would put their backs up too firmly. I stared around the gathering as they paused, some half-risen, some in the act of finishing their wine, others gathering their cloaks and weapons.

“Consider the plight of Vallia. A puissant empire and a strong emperor who yet must manipulate the factions within the empire. Consider the ambition of another, someone of equal or greater stature, someone with — extraordinary powers. Someone who can extend his tentacles of power over vast distances and subvert the good and use the evil for his own ends. Someone who will take Vallia and rule it through his puppets.”

“How can there be any such man?” demanded Crimahan.

I went on doggedly, wondering, to tell the truth, just how much to reveal, and knowing they would hardly believe.

“All these risings are connected. There is a master plan. Where, emperor, is your personal Wizard of Loh, Deb-sa-Chiu?”

Queen Lush gasped.

The emperor smiled at her, patting her hand, and turned to me.

“He was ill. He craved leave to return home.”

“And you let him go?”

“One does not easily ignore the reasonable requests of a Wizard of Loh. Their powers are — are strange.”

“Quite.”

I’d bet a first-class zorca against a broken-down calsany that Deb-sa-Chiu, who had sought out Delia for me, had been made ill by the conjurations of Phu-si-Yantong. It was one more carefully arranged part of his plan. Even though no other Wizard of Loh might be as powerful as Yantong — with the possible and hoped for exception of Khe-Hi-Bjanching — that devil would take no chances and had got rid of Deb-sa-Chiu.

“What has a Wizard of Loh to do with-” started Crimahan in his spiteful way. But the emperor was not Delia’s father for nothing. His smile for Queen Lush altered, subtly, as he said:

“And, Dray, you think-?”

“Aye. And not think. Know.”

Queen Lush put a hand to her breast. She was very pale.

“Rest easy, my queen,” said the emperor, and I noted the form of address. “Here, a glass of wine. This news, if true, is very dreadful. But you have been a comfort and a support to me. I could not have gone on without you at my side. Do not fail me now.”

“I shall stand with you. I swear it!” She looked distraught and this was no wonderful thing, for the idea of having a Wizard of Loh pitted against you is unnerving, to say the least. The others in the room looked shaken. Even if, later, they would pooh-pooh what I had said, at the moment they were a badly rattled bunch.

Well, I had told them some of it. Maybe that was a mistake and I certainly would tell them no more. But the black pall over Vallia needed men and women now who would fight to the end even when they knew the end would be evil and filled with sorrow, people who would rend that black pall even though the end was doom-laden horror.

A somberness held them all as they departed to go about the petty business of supply and reorganization we had decided. Not a one knew a whisper of the whereabouts of Delia. As for my inquiries about the islands of Vallia, they were out of it. Nothing from Rahartdrin, Ava, Womox, all the others, not a sound or sign from Veliadrin or Zamra or Valka.

Deciding to make myself useful I took a tour of the sentry posts and found all quiet. There was time for a yarn and to chew a handful of palines with the Pachaks. Then I crawled off to our wing of the palace hoping to get in at least a few burs sleep before the alarums and excursions of the morrow. Queen Lushfymi waited for me in my bedchamber.

Of slaves there were none here, they had all run off. Even the emperor’s apartments were served only by a few slaves left to him. I gaped at her. Magnificent, she looked. Sheerly clad all in white that threw the ebon glory of her hair and the long passionate violet eyes into startling contrast, she sat up on the bed and clasped her hands together over her breast.

“The emperor-?” I said.

“He sleeps. I must talk to you.”

“You make that plain.”

If I expected another wearisome scene after the fashion of those I had endured at the hands of willful, passionate, lovely women in the past, I was swiftly disabused of the notion. She was no new candidate to be spurned after the style of Queen Lilah, and Queen Fahia, and all the others.

“The Bowmen of Loh were most wroth at their defeat.”

I poured her wine and took some myself — in chased silver goblets — and sat beside her on the bed. Her perfume scented with a mysterious power I ignored. She appeared to radiate a light and a warmth in the dim chamber.

“They would be, seeing they are proud fighting men.”

She was nerving herself to say something. It hovered on those full voluptuous lips, and would not come forth. So, to ease the situation, I sipped my wine and offered palines, and tried not to be too much amused by the ludicrous affair.

Then, seeing she was having this difficulty, I said: “You and the emperor are very friendly. You have got on like a house on fire-”

“I love him.”

She said this simply, unaffectedly. I sipped wine. She was a cunning, devious queen. She had brought her country of Lome to a position of immense wealth and power in Pandahem. She was possessed of witch-like powers — or so it was said. Why did she tell me this? Was it even true?

“It is true, Dray Prescot.”

I sat up.

“No, I cannot read your mind. But I can divine much that is in a man’s heart. So I would not attempt to seduce you, for I know of your passion for Delia, the Princess Majestrix.”

I said nothing.

Then, out of deviltry, I said: “And if that were not so and if you loved the emperor as you claim, would you try to seduce me?”

Frankly, her violet eyes bearing down on me, she said: “Yes. I would. If by doing so I could help the emperor. Believe me.”

I rubbed my chin. I needed a shave. I said: “When we met — when I fell through your palanquin awning, you did not much like me and, I confess, I did not much care for you. Why do you seek me out to tell me this?” Then, thinking I understood, I added: “I shall not stand in your way. I should be glad if the emperor wed again and brought forth a whole regiment of princes and princesses-”

“It is not that.”

“Perhaps, Queen Lush, you had better tell it all to me.”

I used the name without thinking — and she amazed me by smiling. “From you, Dray Prescot, that comes as a declaration of intent.”

“There is nothing wrong with the name Queen Lush. Anyway, it suits you. Names are more important on Kregen than most folk care to admit-”

“Yes. Oh, yes!”

That surprised me. So, ignoring a sudden wash of unease, I told her to spit it out and have done.

“It is not easy. Promise me you will remember that I truly love the emperor?”

“If you like.”

“I know you, Dray Prescot, know far more of you than you can possibly dream — so that answer will suffice. I know of you-” She held up her hand to stop me asking her how she thought she knew so damn much about me, and she rushed on now, in full spate, getting it all out. “The Crimson Bowmen. Their defeat was horrible. How do you think their enemy from Hamal knew the plans, knew what the Vallian army would do? How was it that the Hamalese lay in wait and slew and slew?” She nodded and I reached over and gripped her wrist. Her flesh was like ice. “Yes, Dray Prescot, yes! I told them. I, the Queen of Lome, through my occult arts, I told the Hamalese all the secrets of the emperor’s plans, and the army was destroyed and the blood flowed, and-”

I slapped her face.

When she calmed down — but only a little, for the situation was fraught and she was in a sprung-steel state of nervous excitement and remorse, I told her to tell me the rest.

“The Hamalese conquered Pandahem as you know and Queen Thyllis slew my father. But at the Battle of Jholaix the Vallians conquered and Pandahem once more threw off the yoke of Hamal. But new enemies arose. Far more powerful.” She wrenched away and stood up. Her long white gown glimmered in the dim, tapestry-hung room. She began to walk up and down, jerkily, her hands now clasped together, now raised to heaven, her lovely face passionate with remembered terror, a drugged horror that turned her violet eyes into shadowed deeps. “I must tell you, for you are the man to support the emperor now and the southwest will rally to him, and the islands, and we can still win, still win against-” She faltered, and that lissom body drooped.

“Who made you betray the Vallian army?”

“I think — I think, Dray Prescot, you know.”

She turned away, half-fainting with her emotions; but I made no move to assist her. A shadow moved in the doorway at my side and I held up my hand to the emperor, a commanding gesture that would ordinarily have sent him flying into a rage; but he looked long at Queen Lush and listened to her, and the old devil remained silent, a shadow among shadows of the bedchamber. Speaking in as soothing a voice as I could manage, I said: “Lome has become rich and splendid since you took the throne. Is this also the work of he who now owns you?”

Her shoulders trembled. “Yes.” The whisper barely reached.

“In return for all he has done for Lome, with you as queen, he demanded you come to Vallia, seduce the emperor, gain his confidence — and then betray him?”

“Yes.”

The emperor moved and I reached out my hand and grasped his forearm, and gripped enough so that he understood. Truly, the times had wrought on him. He stood, a bleak dark statue, in the shadows of the bed at my side, and, together, we listened as Queen Lushfymi of Lome choked out her confession. Phu-si-Yantong.

She had never met him. But his agents and his own lupal projection had convinced her. The terrors she felt were reflected palely in her stammering voice. Yantong had moved into Pandahem in the wake of the dissolution of the Hamalese armies and in his own surreptitious, cunning, devious ways had exerted his own authority. His puppets now occupied the thrones of the kingdoms of Pandahem. A fleeting twinge of guilt at thought of Tilda and Pando passed across my mind; but that was of and for another time. Here and now the dark and treacherous scheme to destroy Vallia was being revealed to us.

“See!” cried Queen Lush, her laugh too close to hysteria for my liking. She drew from her sleeve a black feather. “See! I was prepared to make the emperor a convert to the Great Chyyan; but you, Dray Prescot, destroyed that scheme. Now my master sends warriors to do his work.” She blew the black feather from her. It gyrated and was lost in the shadows. She laughed again, the hysteria hideously near, so near as to be madness. Her glimmering form moved in the shaded lamplight of the bedchamber. Silently, the emperor stood at my side, watching and listening.

Queen Lush drew from the bosom of her dress a dagger, sheathed, ornate, crusted with gems, the style of weapon a queen might carry. She waved it wildly. “Look upon the death of the Emperor of Vallia, the man I love, the man I was forced to betray, the man for whom I would give my life — the man for whom I will give my life!”

The stiletto flashed clear of the scabbard. Twin deeply cut grooves marked the shining blade.

“This blade is poisoned. One nick and the emperor is dead. I am to stab him, when my task is done — but I cannot, I cannot.”

Moving with a purposeful slowness I reached out across the bedclothes and hooked my hard old fist around the hilt of the rapier that hung by the bedpost, angled so as to be drawn in a twinkling. I had vaulted ahead in my thoughts. Khe-Hi-Bjanching had shown me what gladiomancy could do and although I did not know if a Wizard of Loh could manipulate a sword or dagger over immense distances, I wouldn’t put it past that Wizard of Loh who had contrived our downfall. I said sharply: “And will the death of the emperor make so much difference to the schemes of Phu-si-Yantong?”

“He must die. The master has said so and must be obeyed.”

“This evil man is no longer your master, Queen Lush. Do not think of him as your master ever again.”

She turned her head, slowly, tilting, peering at me with her head on one side, half over her shoulder. She looked quite mad. “No. He is my master-”

“He is not your master. He is a real right bastard and a kleesh — a damned Wizard of Loh. But he owns you no longer.”

The poisoned dagger looked mightily unpleasant.

Now the emperor was an emperor and anyone who forgot that deserved to have their heads off; but, far more important, he was the father of my Delia. That was the fact that gave him character in my eyes, and now he proved himself.

Without faltering, he moved past the bed, stood upright in a patch of light thrown by the shaded lamp. He stared at Queen Lush, who regarded him with a bright, avid look that made my hand jump on the rapier hilt.

“Queen!” declared the emperor. “You say you love me as I love you. We have meant much, one to the other, in these dark times. Will you stab me? Can you slay me? I am here — see, I lift my arms. Stab, Queen Lush — if you can.”

As they stood, facing each other, frozen, I wondered if the old devil realized how he had called his queen.

She took a tottering step. Another. The dagger lifted. I eased the rapier out and stood up. With a shriek of virulent fury or of hysterical triumph — a shriek of such violence that the emperor jumped — Queen Lush hurled the dagger to the floor. It thwacked into the floorboards through a priceless carpet of Walfarg weave, thrummed with the gems glittering in its hilt, the poisoned slots dark and sinister along the blade.

“No, my emperor-” Then they collapsed into each other’s arms.

A sharp and chilling tang struck through the close air of the bedchamber. Queen Lush screamed. The emperor, still holding her, swung about. We all stared at the far wall. In a ghostly swirl of color and shadow, a mist of madness, a shape formed in thin air against the wall. Hunched, that dire form, hunched and malicious, malefic with power as the two dark eye sockets abruptly glittered with twin spots of light. The ghostly form thickened and solidified and yet remained insubstantial, unreal, a projection of the mind.

“Master-” croaked the queen. She would have fallen but for the emperor’s arms. The lupal projection of Phu-si-Yantong writhed in my bedchamber. What forces he was employing to overcome or bypass the sealings placed there by Khe-Hi-Bjanching I could not know; but the lupal projection wavered as sand wavers on a stream bed, as the mirages dance in the burning deserts. An arm lifted. Clawed finger pointed. The queen screamed as though tormented with red-hot pincers. The emperor shouted, an agonized bark of pure horror.

I saw the tableau hold for a heartbeat; then the sorcerous image of the wizard shimmered and faded and I thought I heard the distant sound of golden bells, tingling and tinkling in a dream, fading, dying, gone.

“Dray!” gasped the emperor.

His face looked gray in the patch of lamplight, gray and filled with a horror so great he could barely stand.

The woman slumped in his arms, the white dress strangely loose.

He turned her so I could see her face.

Queen Lushfymi — so glorious, so darkly glittering, so regal with beauty and voluptuousness — hung slackly on the emperor’s arm. Phu-si-Yantong had smitten her with chivrel. Her white hair straggled in brittle strands, her shrunken face bore a spiderweb of cracks, the wrinkles destroying all the purity of that face. Spittle slobbered from brown and leathery lips.

Hideous, a hag, Queen Lush whimpered feebly and clung with skeleton arms to the Emperor of Vallia. The decaying smell of her stank in our nostrils.