Delia of Vallia (26 page)

Dragging their chains, herded in a mass of suffering, the four men did not see their empress and queen beside the table at the far end. They saw the prepared stakes, the saw-edged barriers, the instruments, and they understood what was to be their fate.

Now the excitement rippled around the watching women. Everyone brightened up. Nyleen and her cronies prepared themselves for a pleasant divertissement. Only the witch kept her gaze bent on first Delia and then Jilian. She looked from one to the other, and back, like a reptile measuring its prey.

The occult powers of sorcerers and sorceresses could be very real, or could be shams to rook the gullible. Delia believed this Fiacola must be mistress of some of the arts, for to suborn away a Sister of the Rose from her vows must take thaumaturgy of a high order. Perhaps Delia could not answer for the integrity of every Sister...

But — Jilian! No, that was certain sure. Witchery had ensorcelled Jilian, quite apart from glib promises of help in tracking down Kov Colun Mogper of Mursham to his just desserts. If Delia could not believe in and trust Jilian, then her whole concept of integrity was proved valueless and ridiculous.

The first men were prepared for blood, agony and death. Delia put one hand on the edge of the table. Sticky wine fouled her fingers, but she did not grimace with distaste. Spilled wine, sticky and unpleasant though it be, was as nothing beside the spilling of blood now being enacted out there on the floor. The Claw still strapped up on her arm fit her hand like a glove. The dagger, blood-befouled like the Claw, hung limply in her fist. The two Battle Maidens kept on taking their surveillance away, kept on darting looks at what was going on out there among the shrieks and the vomit and the blood. But they did not relax their vigilance. One movement, and one or other of the Battle Maidens would shaft her...

Aware of the grisly scrutiny of the witch, Delia deliberately kept her own gaze averted. She did not look at the suffering human beings out there; she looked at her Djangs, and at Lathdo and Jordio. They stood sullenly, chafing their chains, so overloaded they could barely move. Their clothes were in a mess, ripped and stained, and their faces were bruised and bloodied. But they did not look cowed. In this, at least, they were prepared to face a ghastly end with fortitude.

She noticed an odd circumstance about Dalki. He was the four-chain man. But, somehow, he seemed only to have three chains lapping his body. As she watched a loop of chain tumbled free of his tunic. Weirdly, like the trunk of a mammoth beast withdrawing, it slithered up and vanished from view. Delia blinked. Dalki seemed to be in movement although he remained still. Most odd. Another chain dropped, and was checked, and so drawn back. She felt the pulse in her throat. In some unaccountable way, Dalki was freeing himself of his chains. He must have been working on them from the moment they were first loaded upon him, and, no doubt now, he was cursing away that it had taken so long, and that he was in sight of freedom when he was also in sight of death.

A victim shrieked and died. He was glad to die, and the women were sorry that entertainment was over. But they looked eagerly for the next. Nyleen stood up. She walked with her smooth gait out onto the floor to inspect personally the gruesome wreckage. Other women crowded up. The guards moved forward.

Nyleen liked, now and then, to take a hand herself. She could flick and slash her Whip, and although she would have been cut to shreds in short order by any mistress in the Grakvar, she still liked to posture.

“Chain some to the posts,” she commanded. “We will have a competition.”

“Oh, yes, kovneva,” chorused her cronies. And, still, Delia found it hard to hate the silly woman. Her craving for power and glory, her mimicry of the ways of the Queens of Pain of Loh, as Delia shrewdly surmised, her genuine belief that she had a mission to chastise all men, all these things added up to a woman bereft of essentials and adrift on tides of unchecked emotion. That was unfortunate, reprehensible, and in its effects evil; but Nyleen, Delia guessed, was also the victim of sorcery.

“Chain up some fine specimens, strong ones.” Nyleen pointed. “Those! They are sullen enough, by the Breath of Evirani! We will make them wish they had not been born men.”

Lathdo, Jordio, Dalki and Tandu were chained up. In an odd way, Dalki managed to conceal his handiwork and was chained up with the others. Delia marveled. Three other hard and hairy men were chained up alongside to the stakes. Nyleen preened herself and took the whip a girl slave ran out and proffered.

The first blow missed. No one laughed. Jilian’s booted foot quivered; but it did not swing. The second blow chunked into one of the hairy men, and he yelled. The third blow almost took Nyleen’s eye out. She glared around pettishly. She threw the Whip down and drew a long Vallian dagger.

“I have a keener way with men, my dears!”

“Yes, kovneva!”

She advanced with the dagger held aloft.

“Wait!” The deep bell-like voice of Fiacola the Gaze caught everyone. Nyleen stopped and looked around. The dagger slowly descended.

“Yes, Sana?”

“The Jikai Vuvushi, Jilian, will now fight the slave girl.”

“But, Fiacola—”

“Fight!
Now!
”

Jilian put her feet on the floor and stood up slowly.

She turned to face the witch. On Jilian’s pallid face that brooding look compressed into a deep and intense absorption.

“And Sana, if I do not choose to fight?”

The witch cackled. The mellow voice broke into a harsh cackling croak, as of great enjoyment.

“I did not think you would. Would you fight some other girl? Say, that Jikai Vuvushi there?”

Delia felt her heart contract.

“Oh, Jilian!” she said to herself. “Careful!”

But Jilian tossed that dark hair back. “If I was commanded,” she said, carelessly.

The Witch nodded within her hood, and the sliding crimson gleam came and went. “Take the dagger from that slave girl. Take the Claw away from her. Why, Kovneva Nyleen, do you think Jilian Sweet-Tooth will not fight this one particular little slave shishi?”

Nyleen looked bewildered. “Why, she says she is tired. But she will fight. We will see to that.”

The hood swept back. Fiacola’s face was revealed. Delia saw the smooth round plump features, like those of a young girl who in all innocence and purity follows the sacred procession, clad all in a long white gown, trembling with the spiritual fires of devotion. A clawed hand lifted, and a black fingernail pointed.

That hooked talon pointed directly at Delia.

“Jilian would fight another, if you commanded, Nyleen. But you will not make her fight this one! I know! I have the power. I have the Gaze!” Her voice rose, booming around the refectory, echoing, demanding. “For that silly slave girl is Delia, Empress of Vallia!”

Into the stunned silence Delia’s scornful laugh rang like a sword striking stone. “The witch is deranged. I am just a poor girl caught up into slavery—”

“It is useless, Delia of Delphond! You are the Empress of Vallia.”

A massive bull bellow smashed above the sudden chatter. Over the exclamations of wonder and surprise, and then of understanding and satisfaction, that gargantuan roar broke like a hurricane.

“My queen!”

Tandu turned into a writhing onslaught of flesh and bone and sinew, striving against the chains.

The witch laughed. “This woman is, also, as you will doubtless know, the Queen of Djanduin.”

Her pure childlike face turned toward Jilian. Brightly she looked upon the Sweet-Tooth.

“Jilian. You are a Sister of the Whip. I have said the kovneva will not make you fight your friend, the empress. But, for me you will fight her. For me you will cut her and cut her again, and slay her into little pieces. For me, for Fiacola the Gaze, for I have the power over you, Jilian Sweet-Tooth.”

Watching her friend, Delia felt the agony for her, the sorrow. Jilian trembled. She swayed. Her pallor now turned her face more icy than Nyleen’s. Sweat dropped.

“You have the power, Fiacola. And I believed you.”

“Continue to do so. What is there that can stand against what I may make you do? Fight the empress, Jilian! Fight and cut and kill!”

As though a mere inconsequential irritation in the clash of wills, Nyleen chattered out quickly: “If this is true! It must be true! Then we have won! But, Jilian — fight her as Fiacola commands. But I do suggest you do not kill her. Let us chain her up and let her die — differently — yes?”

“Chain her up?” said Jilian. She swayed. “Fight Delia to the death and then not kill but turn her over to you for...”

“Only if Fiacola approves, of course.”

Watching her friend, Delia said nothing.

Jilian’s bare left hand brushed the dark hair back from her forehead where it immediately fell back into that curved line above her eyebrows. “Lace up her Claw,” she said to the Battle Maiden plucking at the lacings. “Fetch my balass box.”

Delia sucked a breath.

The box was rushed in and placed upon the table, and all the time Tandu struggled and writhed and roared. No one paid him any attention. Jilian unlocked the box and threw the lid back. She withdrew her Claw. That glittering fang of death was a supreme example of the Jikvar armorer’s art. She glanced across at Nyleen.

“You would do what you say, kovneva?”

“Of course. What else? Now, Jilian, my dear, do as Fiacola commands and let us get on with this evening. It is going to be absolutely splendid now. Now that the empress will be dead we can all go forward with much greater heart. It is so exciting.”

The Sweet-Tooth moved as a bamboo and paper puppet moves behind the screen in a shadow play. Always a girl of a brooding and intense nature, she now seemed to draw in upon herself. She spoke in a slurred way. “You command me, Fiacola the Gaze?”

“I command, Jilian, and I have the power over you.”

The Claw turned in Jilian’s right hand, turned and lifted and positioned ready to be fitted snugly up over her left hand and arm. Each steel segment, cunningly curved, articulated, oiled, catching sparkles of fire from the torchlights, would be honed to razor sharpness. Once that hand of death fastened on Delia’s face...

Delia said: “Fiacola claims she has the power, Jilian. And you have been led into a belief she speaks the truth.”

Fiacola’s head swiveled from her rapt attention upon Jilian to stare in a liquid crimson gleaming upon Delia.

“Silence! Shastum!”

“Fiacola the Gaze,” said Delia, and she felt a stroking pressure upon her, like spider silk drawing and tightening. She lifted her head. “You claim to be a witch. But there are powers of which you know nothing.” The contempt in Delia’s voice flayed as the lash flays in a flogging jikaider. “You do not feel. There are powers beyond your puny comprehension.”

“I command this girl, and she will surely cut you and slay you into little pieces—”

“You, Fiacola the Malignant, command nothing. You may deceive this pitiful creature Nyleen and her abhorrent cronies. I do not think you can command against those powers of which you know nothing.”

The childish features contorted. “I am Fiacola the Gaze! I have powers! Jilian — cut her, kill her, slay her into little pieces! I command you!”

The crimson gleam remained fast set upon Delia. She faced that Gaze, unflinching. She could feel the spider strands drawing upon her mind, and she resisted. There was no other chance of life beyond this...

“Jilian,” said Delia, and her voice rang and soared. “Jilian!”

Instantly, Tandu’s roarings subsided. The witch, her gaze fixed on Delia, flinched. The Sweet-Tooth moved her head in a peculiar sideways motion.

“There is no hope for you, Delia of Delphond, Empress of Vallia.” The witch chattered and her childish features twisted in concentration. The spider strands tightened.

Jilian said: “You command me to destroy my friend, witch. Your power is great. But Delia and I have a power, too. It is a power you fear and abhor because you cannot feel it.”

And Jilian Sweet-Tooth reached her left hand up to her neck and drew one of the three terchicks that snugged in their sheaths over her shoulder, and threw. The throwing knife glinted just once as it streaked. The point penetrated Fiacola’s right eye, and the blade went in up to the hilt.

Had the witch turned into a puff of blue smoke, Delia, for one, would not have been surprised.

The spider strands slithered unpleasantly, like cobwebs brushed aside in the dark, and vanished.

Nyleen shrieked, purple-faced. Her shock at the revelation that Alyss the slave who played the harp so divinely was the empress had been followed by joy that the woman was under her hand at last. And now — now the witch was dead. All her icy pallor fled. Engorged, she screamed orders. In a trice Delia and Jilian were overborne and chained. Nyleen cast a single glance at the crumpled body in its hooded gown. Fiacola the Gaze was dead. There were other witches. The scheme must go on. She must have the empress killed — kill her herself! — and then marry the emperor and destroy him. Then she, Nyleen, would be Empress of Vallia. The scheme
would
work...

The dagger held aloft, she advanced upon Delia.

Tandu roared at her. His magnificent Djang head lifted and he told her something that brought the breath short between her teeth.

“Your tongue will be cut out, rast, I promise you!”

Dalki shouted across, adding to what his father had said, amplifying, going into graphic details. His description of Nyleen drove the color from her face. Her body shook in its panoply of gems and gold and silks. She looked like an Ice Queen of Myth, a Queen of Pain of Loh. The dagger trembled violently.

Delia heard Jilian say: “Once we get out of these chains we will make a bonny fight of it. Delia — I knew nothing—”

“Yes, Jilian. I know.”

“How can you know? How can you trust me—?”

“I thought I knew my Jilian Sweet-Tooth. And I was right. I did. Fiacola the Gaze did not, for all her sorcery.”

“... pasty-faced, impotent, sag-chested, knock-kneed, moustached, bladder of a woman,” quoth Dalki, merrily, going on into further disparaging descriptions of Nyleen.