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Authors: David Drake

BOOK: Queen of Demons
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“What?” said a querulous voice from the interior. “What are you talking about? And where's Papnotis?”
Attaper gestured Garric and his companions inside, then closed the door behind them. His face was perfectly expressionless.
Valence III, King of the Isles, was younger than Garric's father. He looked ancient: thin and gray-faced, with wine stains on his goatee and the cerulean silk tunic he wore.
“Who are you?” he demanded. His eyes glanced over Royhas with a flicker of recognition, but they focused on Garric's sword. “Who sent you?”
He looked at the nobleman and continued on a rising note, “Royhas, who sent you?”
“The people of the Isles sent us, Your Majesty,” Garric said. “We're here to save the kingdom, for you and for all citizens.”
Valence turned away with a cracked laugh. This large room was fitted as a council chamber with tables, couches, and a bare wall against which aides could stand while ministers discussed matters of state. Two doors led off it: one of burl walnut standing ajar, through which Garric glimpsed a bed; and a discreetly curtained portal which probably led to servants' quarters and a kitchen, unless that was in a separate building.
The king appeared to have been sleeping on one of the couches here. Fruit stood untouched on a sideboard, but empty wine flasks lay on the floor. One of them, ticked by the opening door, was still rolling.
The king opened the lower cabinet of the sideboard and peered inside. “Oh, Lady help me,” he moaned. Straightening,
he shouted to the world at large, “Bring me wine! How dare you leave me without wine?”
Tenoctris walked to the king's side and brushed his forehead with the twig she'd plucked. “Sit with me, Your Majesty,” she said in a gentle voice. “You'll feel better.”
Valence let Tenoctris lead him to a couch covered in the hide of an antelope with soft taupe fur, but he began to cry. Tenoctris held the twig against his forehead and whispered words Garric couldn't hear. A faint rose glow formed over the king's head like fuzz on a peach.
“I'm going to die,” Valence said. “I was supposed to feed the Beast three days ago, but the servants ran away because of the riots. The queen will come for me or the Beast will come for me—it doesn't matter which. I'm going to die!”
“We've driven the queen from Ornifal,” Garric said. “Tell us about the Beast.”
“It has all power, Silyon told me,” Valence said. His eyes were open but he spoke like a sleepwalker. “It would save me from the queen, he said, and nothing else could. But if it was so powerful, why do I have to feed it? Why couldn't it find girls for itself? It isn't fair!”
Garric saw Liane's face go very still. He hoped he kept his own expressionless, because the disgust he felt wasn't the proper emotion to display to the man whose assent was necessary to Garric and the kingdom.
“Where is he?” Garric said aloud. “The man you call the Beast?”
“Man?” Valence repeated, then cackled another burst of mad laughter. “
It
, not he. And I don't know where it is, but we speak to it through a well in the ruins of the Tyrants' Palace. There's nothing there if you look down, but Silyon shows me the Beast in his mirror. And the girls, it finds the girls we lower down to it.”
Valence tried to rise to his feet. Tenoctris' touch, gentle as a kitten's, thrust him back onto the couch. “Oh, dear Lady help me,” he said. “Please give me wine. Please.”
“Tenoctris?” Garric said. “Is there anything else we need to know about the Beast?”
The old wizard continued to whisper her incantation. She shook her head minusculely in negation.
“Your Majesty,” Garric said, “for your own sake and for the kingdom, you must go out to the gate with us and tell the citizens that I am your son and successor. Then we can keep you safe from the queen and from other enemies. Even the Beast.”
“Nothing can save me!” Valence shouted. “Are you a fool? You don't understand: the Beast has all power! I thought it would save me, but now I know it never meant to do that. But if only I could feed it, perhaps it would eat me last. Do you see? It would eat me last!”
“I see, Your Majesty,” Garric said. He held his hands open in front of him, but in all truth he had no wish to grip his sword. He felt toward Valence as he would feel toward a roach scuttling across the floor of his mother's pantry.
“Come, Your Majesty,” Royhas said, offering Valence his hand. “Prince Garric will save you. You'll tell the people that you've adopted him as your son and heir, and then we'll take care of all the rest.”
“What?” the king said in a return of his original peevish tone. “Who is he, anyway? And why is he wearing a sword! I'm King of the Isles!”
“Indeed you are, Your Majesty,” Garric said, taking Valence's other hand. Gentle pressure from the two men brought the king to his feet like a child learning to walk between its parents. “My sword is here to defend you against all enemies. Tell the people to obey me in your place, and we'll do the rest.”
“There's riots,” Valence said as they walked him slowly forward. “They'll kill me! They know I couldn't protect them from the queen!”
Liane silently opened the door. Tenoctris followed behind the three men, still chanting softly but no longer stroking the king's forehead. The glow had faded to what
might have been a flush on Valence's skin.
“We've dealt with the queen in your name, Your Majesty,” Garric said. “We'll keep you safe.”
He found he couldn't hate so abject a coward. Males are formed to react to challenges—and a broken reed like Valence was no challenge to anyone, however much evil the king might have done in his weakness.
Attaper led them. At his signal the four guards followed, their eyes scanning for threats in the plantings to either side.
“Loyalty can't be bought or even earned, lad,”
a voice whispered in Garric's mind.
“It has to be given. And it really doesn't matter that Valence is unworthy of it. As the Gods know he is!”
They reached the gate and the larger detachment of Blood Eagles. The crowd rumbled through the masonry and thick wood, like a nearing storm.
“Let me out the wicket,” Garric said to Attaper. “I'll order them to stand back. Then open both leaves wide and bring His Majesty through to make the announcement.”
“Make it so,” Attaper said to the soldier with his hand on the wicket's separate crossbar. Garric noticed that the legate hadn't so much as glanced at Valence for confirmation.
Garric stepped into the street. The noise was deafening. The guards from the conspirators' households stood two deep. Their spears were crossed before them to bar the press of people.
Garric hopped onto Tenoctris' sedan chair and said to the bearers, “Lift me up so that I can be seen!”
When Garric rose into general sight, barely wobbling, he raised both arms. The crowd roar redoubled, then fell away slightly. He'd never seen so many people in one place before—except in the memories he had from King Cams, similar gatherings and similar occasions.
“Citizens of the Isles!” Garric shouted. Some of the people could hear him. They would tell others, and anyway
the most important thing was to be
seen
. “Your king has an announcement to make!”
The main gates opened. Garric motioned the other sedan chair to the side of his, then risked a look backward.
The Blood Eagles were drawn up five ranks deep and eight files wide, filling the archway with their armored bodies. Between the fourth and fifth file tottered Valence, wearing the circlet of gold Royhas had brought for him: they hadn't been sure they'd have time to find the ornate crown of the present dynasty. Tenoctris followed the king, leaning on Liane. She continued to chant the words that kept Valence from collapsing in blubbery incapacity.
Attaper helped Valence onto the chair, then gripped the king's thigh with a powerful hand to steady him as the bearers lifted him into full sight of the crowd.
“Citizens of the Isles!” Garric shouted. “His Majesty King Valence the Third has adopted me as his son. He has proclaimed me regent of the Kingdom of the Isles!”
Valence was gaping like a hooked perch. He trembled dangerously despite the legate's support. Liane stepped to the king's other side and added her help, but Valence was likely to buckle at the knees at any moment.
Garric lifted the diadem and put it on his own head. He'd tried the circlet on when Royhas brought it to the queen's mansion, to make sure it would fit without looking ridiculous. Then it had been no more than a band of metal, heavy despite being so thin, and vaguely uncomfortable. Now—
Golden light suffused Garric's mind. In it sparkled images—not from his memory or even that of Carus alone, but from scores of generations of kingship. All the rulers of the Old Kingdom were with Garric momentarily, united like the facets of a diamond.
His vision cleared. The crowd shouted like a god trumpeting. Through the joyous sound Garric heard Tenoctris' voice.
He turned. Liane looked around also. Neither of them could understand Tenoctris' words, but Garric from his
higher vantage point could see over the heads of the Blood Eagles.
A scrawny man wearing a robe embroidered with symbols in the Old Script had come up the path from the bungalow where Valence had hidden himself away. He had bones in his earlobes. Through the open gateway he saw Garric crowned and Valence beside him.
Garric pointed. “Stop that man!” he cried. “Stop Silyon!”
But the wizard, doffing his heavy garments, had vanished into the shrubbery in his loincloth before the Blood Eagles could turn to see him.
 
 
Halphemos wore a garment of gold. It weighed less than gossamer, but because each strand scattered light like an invisibly thin mirror, the youth was as modestly clothed as if he'd been wearing his own robe of silk brocade.
Cerix wore nothing at all. The older wizard was too delighted with his regenerated body to cover any part of it. The hair on his legs from mid-thigh was fine and blond in contrast to the black curls on his arms and torso, but the bones and musculature were complete. In the middle of a comment, Cerix was likely to lose his train of thought as he watched his toes stretch.
Ilna wore the tunic she'd woven in Erdin, cinched with the twin of the sash she'd given to Liane. Watching the men prance in what they'd gotten from the Beautiful People—Cerix no less than Halphemos—offended her, though of course she didn't interfere in the way her companions chose to act. Besides, she knew in her heart that she was a fool to feel the way she did.
So be it. Ilna os-Kenset didn't want to change.
Ilna swallowed the slice she'd cut from a strawberry the size of her head, juicy and meltingly delicious. She looked at the two wizards and the three People of Beauty who'd greeted her when she awakened here, then said, “I intend to return to the world from which I was kidnapped
by the Scaled Men. If there was a way into this garden, there's a way out of it. Which I will find.”
“But mistress,” Wim said in puzzlement. “Why do you want to leave? Is there anything you need that we haven't offered you?”
Halphemos looked distressed; he fidgeted with the cuff of his vaporous tunic rather than meet Ilna's eyes. Cerix glared at her angrily, knowing where the discussion was going to go and furious about what it would mean to him.
Ilna's nose wrinkled. Cerix could see the right of it as clearly as she did, but he was letting personal considerations prevent him from acting.
“My brother's gotten into trouble,” she said to Wim. Glancing aside toward Halphemos she added, “Or been put into trouble by others. I'm going to try to help him, and for that I need to be back in my own world.”
“The boy wasn't responsible for what happened to your brother!” Cerix said.
“It doesn't matter,” said Ilna; and it really didn't. She didn't believe Halphemos had harmed Cashel or anyone else deliberately. “Can you help me, Master Wim, or must I find the path myself?”
A slim girl passed, playing a twin-necked theorbo to half a dozen youths who walked with her entranced. Ilna marveled at the girl's intricate fingerings—but though the lute strings vibrated, they made no sound.
“We can show you the path you seek,” Bram said. “But mistress, there's no place on that plane as full of joy and contentment as the Garden.”
Ilna almost laughed at the humor of it. “I daresay you're right,” she said, “but I can't imagine what bearing you think that has on me.”
She stood. She'd eaten her fill of the huge strawberry, but most of it still remained. The waste disturbed Ilna, as much as anything because it underscored the Garden's vast abundance, but there was nothing she could do. Perhaps the deer-footed unicorn walking slowly through the nearby orange grove would finish the fruit.

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