Captive Scorpio (26 page)

“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.

Nineteen

Vondium Burns

The moment of doom for Vondium the Proud could no longer be delayed.

The day dawned with a particularly brilliant flood of jade and ruby lights, pouring in commingled beauty from the Suns of Scorpio. But this day would see the end of the empire, the death of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people, the enslavement of hosts, the shedding of blood to stink rawly into the shining benign sky.

We did what we could for Queen Lush. An aged crone, trembling, shaking, her white hair brittle as dried leaves, she gasped with the effort of breathing, her eyes filmed, her mouth slack and drooling. The devil-cast chivrel had not much longer to run for her. Old before her time she was doomed as the Empire of Vallia was doomed.

The emperor was stricken.

“My strong right arm,” he said, clasping his head, his strong handsome face ashen. “Stricken down — torn from me when I needed her most”

I was torn, also, at sight of this great and puissant emperor in these straits. I had little cause to care for him save only that through him I had been blessed with Delia. He had ordered my head off — had banished me — I do not to this day know whether he hated me or merely tolerated me. Certainly from time to time, when he recollected, he showed he appreciated a little the services I had rendered him. But now all that was mere tawdry tinsel. The empire was doomed, Vallia was rent asunder and Vondium burned.

The manner of the burning was strange, for we could seethe boiling black smoke clouds from one section or another of the city rising into the bright air, and then they would dwindle away and die. Fresh smoke would rise elsewhere and we would hear the distant clamor of mobs, and then the smoke would die away. Chuktar Wang-Nalgre-Bartong had the explanation.

“The mobs burn and loot, led by the Lornrodders, and someone else is putting out the fires to preserve the city. And, I think, seeing we have had no sight of the Hamalian skyships, it must be the Hamalian army.”

That made sweet sense. Phu-si-Yantong had no wish to preside through his puppets over a destroyed city. He was methodically taking control. His men were putting their new house in order. Only the imperial palace and the great kyro and the webwork of surrounding canals remained to be taken. It seemed the Hamalese high command was in no hurry.

Two probing attacks were made and were flung back with ease but not without loss to us. We had the remnants of the Crimson Bowmen, a handful of Chuliks and Khibils, a few Rapas and Fristles, mercenaries all, and the Pachaks. Of artillery we were woefully short, having but five pieces, two catapults and three varters. Of cavalry we had the two squadrons of totrixes and they were in sorry case. At the first real attack despite our determination to fight we would be overwhelmed.

Kov Lykon Crimahan told the emperor: “You must flee the city, majister. There is no other way to preserve your life.”

“And where should I flee?”

A babble of voices answered this, all proffering different destinations. I felt the ugliness in me. In these circumstances I would not care to chance any of the provinces on the main island and even, dare I say it, even Valka might not offer any sanctuary from the avenging hosts determined to do away with the emperor.

“If only,” said that great man now so shrunken, “if only the queen could advise as she used to do.”

I turned away in disgust. To go to Lome now would be to go to certain destruction. There seemed but one thing left.

I said, turning back and barging through the excited, gesticulating group: “You had best flee to Zenicce. My enclave of Strombor will welcome you.”

“I cannot—”

“Here they come!” bellowed a Deldar, leather-lunged, and we turned to the walls to repel the third attack. This time the Hamalese put in more weight, ready if we did not resist to charge home, but prepared to melt away under opposition and to let us stew a little longer. They played leem and ponsho with us.

“The confident cramphs!” snarled Jiktar Laka Pa-Re. He was wounded, a long glancing slice in his left biceps — his upper left biceps. The Hamalese were shooting crossbow bolts at anything that moved along the battlements of the palace. We had lost the kyro and had been driven back over the first of the canals. “They do not use their catapults—”

“No. Their masters do not wish to deface the palace. The place is beautiful and priceless. They fight for it, just as we do.”

The Crimson Bowmen could outshoot the crossbowmen of Hamal; but their numbers were small and dwindling. Of the mercenaries with us I fancied we could rely on the Chuliks and the Khibils. As for the Rapas and Fristles and few oddments of other diff races, most of them would be gone by nightfall, slipped away to loot a little and then either hire out elsewhere or — or what else? Was not that a mercenary’s life?

As for the Pachaks, until they released themselves from their nikobi, which they would not do and lose honor, they would fight to the death.

Many voices among the emperor’s rump of advisers lifted in favor of flight. The Pachaks could be discharged, their nikobi satisfied, all the others could be let go. The Crimson Bowmen might stay or leave as they willed; their Chuktar kept them screwed tightly down; but. . .

Of the people I knew in Vondium I fancied few if any would be left. Bargom of The Rose of Valka had friends along the cut and he and his family should be away to safety along the canals. The city lowered under shifting palls of smoke through which the suns struck lurid gleams of crimson and jade. The incessant nibbling attacks continued against us; men fell.

More than once I had to warn the emperor in strong terms not to expose himself too freely on the battlements. By this time we had withdrawn into the palace and taken up our positions along an inner ring of fortifications, for we were too few to man the entire cincture of walls. I remembered the way he had thirsted to get into fights before. This time the outcome might not be so jolly.

“I am fighting for my empire.” He said this with a fine fierce air.

“Oh, aye? Your empire is gone, emperor. Vanished, blown away like thistledown. You imprisoned your friends, spurned those who would help you, embraced the bosoms of your enemies—”

He rounded furiously on me, and I relented, and said: “At least you let them go before it was too late. But if they were with us now — Lord Farris, Old Foke, Vad Atherston, all the others who would serve you loyally—”

“I know, I know! They were put away from me through the wiles of the queen. I know. But she repented and has she not paid the price?”

I nodded. I found I felt a great sorrow for Queen Lush.

They say speak of the devil. We looked up as an airboat flew sluggishly toward us from over the city. It staggered in flight and black smoke streamed back, so I knew the voller had been shot at with fire arrows. She made some kind of landing on a high aerial platform and the guards brought down the Lord Farris — and with him — Delia.