'Ware the Dark-Haired Man

by Robert Reginald

  Time to close the trap, he thought to himself, and God help them all if they actually have burned down the church!

  Soon Lord Télen was in custody, together with his chief officers, and Kérés had deployed the common soldiers from the renegade’s force to help put down the blaze started in an outbuilding of Saint Ióv’s. Fortunately, it was soon brought under control.

  Then the captain ordered Télen brought to him, and again drew his sword.

  “You can’t intimidate me!” Télen blustered.

  Kérés idly flicked his wrist, and the baron’s left ear popped off, spinning into the dust by their feet. Télen screamed, and grabbed the streaming stump of his ear with his right hand. The captain smiled.

  “I haven’t a great deal of time,” the officer said, still grinning, “but I try very much to enjoy my work, and I’m willing to work very hard indeed right now to make you talk. I need to know exactly how you intend to signal Duke of Tighris that you control Kórynthály, and I need you to send the appropriate sign or message at once. I will check your response against those of your officers. So tell me, dear Télen, how many appendages do you wish to lose today?”

  As it happened, the baron had no real desire to add much to the toll, only contributing the other ear and the small finger from his left hand, and very quickly provided all of the details requested. Captain Kérés thoroughly and speedily verified the details by interrogating one of the baron’s senior officers, who only lost a nose, and then or­dered Télen to write down the code word.

  “He’ll kill me!” the baron stated.

  “He won’t be in a position to kill you,” Kérés re­sponded. “I, on the other hand, am quite willing to torture you before I kill you, if you fail to obey my every com­mand. Now!”

  The message was quickly dispatched by runner to be slipped under the front door of the ex-king’s manor house.

  As soon as Kipriyán received the missive giving the “all safe” sign, he and Doctor Melanthrix transited to the laundry in Tighrishály Palace.

  The former monarch breathed in deeply, savoring the sweet odors of the lower depths of the great castle.

  “Ah, it’s great to be home, Melánty,” he said.

  Elsewhere in Tighrishály Palace, Captain Fösse was conferring with one of his men, Constable Warka.

  “Have you found Sergeant Poliodór yet?” he in­quired.

  “Not a trace, sir,” the guard responded. “Some of his men are missing, too. We think they’re holed up somewhere in the building, waiting for the king...that is, the Duke, to appear.”

  “Very well, keep looking,” he ordered.

  Then Fösse went into the Great Hall to report to King Arkády.

  “I’m a little worried, sire,” he indicated, after the king took him off to one side for privacy. “Poliodór and at least one squad of his guards are still unaccounted for, and we’re expecting the Duke of Tighris and Melanthrix at any mo­ment.”

  “Just stay on the alert, captain,” the king stated. “I assume that all of your men are in place, including the archers?”

  “They are, majesty,” the officer replied, coming to attention and saluting.

  “Then we can do nothing else but wait for events to unfold,” Arkády noted. “Carry on.”

  “Yes, sir,” Fösse said, hurrying off to confer with his sergeants.

  In the king’s apartments, Queen Dúra paced back and forth, back and forth, waiting for news, brushing away an occasional tear. She had pleaded to attend the confer­ence at the king’s side, but had been refused.

  “The most important thing to me right now is your safety and that of our children,” Arkády had emphasized.

  “Please take me with you,” she had begged. “I should be there, Arkásha.”

  “It’s too dangerous,” he had repeated, as if she hadn’t spoken. “I have a runner hidden away in the hall where he can watch the proceedings. If I’m killed or cap­tured, he will rush here to warn you. Under such circum­stances, I want you to take Márissa and the children, and transit immediately to your brother’s palace in Austrasia. You’ll be safe there. Later, Arión can try regaining the throne, but that will be his decision, not mine.

  “To accomplish my task,” he had told her, “I must know that both you and they are secure. Help me, dear love, please help me.”

  “Just don’t die, Kásha!” she had pleaded. “Just don’t leave me alone!”

  He had grabbed her then by her shoulders and held her tight against him, smothering her objections against his mantle. He could feel the dark, feathery fingers of her hair idly caressing his chin.

  “Never, my Drúsha, never,” he had whispered into her ear. “We will always be together, here and in the af­tertime. Always. Old Death has no claim on us. Whoever goes ahead will wait there for the other, patiently and with love. My vows bind me to your spirit forever.”

  “And mine,” she had softly replied.

  Then she had stood on her toes and kissed him on the mouth, resolving to do what he said, but hating every moment of the interminable wait, wondering what had hap­pened, what would happen at the conference, and whether she and her family would have to flee suddenly to escape the assassin’s knife.

  “What’s the matter, Mamá?” asked Princess Grig­orÿna, her eldest daughter. She had Ouisa tucked under one slender arm.

  “What?” her mother replied, still lost in thought. “Oh, I’m sorry, dearest. I don’t know where I’m at today. I was just wondering how the conference is going, that’s all.”

  “Ouisa says everything’s going to be all right,” the little girl assured her.

  She ran up and gave her mother a hug.

  “I know it is, Rÿna,” the older woman stated, “but sometimes mothers just have to worry a little bit.”

  Wives, too, she added to herself, oh God, wives must worry, too.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  “I CAN’T HOLD IT”

  Meanwhile, down in the laundry former King Kipriyán was conferring with Sergeant Poliodór.

  “I’m a little concerned, majesty,” the soldier was saying, “about Captain Fösse and his men. I was unable to secure them before reporting, simply because they were not where they were supposed to be, and because the captain technically outranks me. I do have three squads of guards ready to spring the trap here in the palace, about thirty-five men in all, so I’m still confident that we can do this. But you must make the final decision.”

  Kipriyán sighed.

  “We’ve gone too far to turn back,” he said. “No matter what happens, the die has been cast, and we all know the consequences of failure. We must either take or kill Prince Arkády immediately, or we’re lost. Let’s get on with it.”

  They then began transiting a few at a time to a little-known and -used alcove mirror at the rear of the Great Hall, where the other two squads already were waiting for them.

  “Is everyone ready?” Poliodór asked.

  When his men responded in the affirmative, he nod­ded to the ex-king.

  Then Kipriyán said: “For God and Kórynthia!” and started into the hall.

  Over his shoulder, he murmured softly to Melan­thrix, “Stay close to me, Melánty. Use your powers when necessary to support mine.”

  Amidst the press of hundreds of attendees, the con­spirators attracted little attention until they neared the table at the center of the room where the Royal Council sat. Then Lord Vydór spotted the former king leading the sol­diers towards them and immediately sounded the alarum.

  Before he could even raise his defenses Vydór was blasted from his seat by a bolt of green energy from Kipriyán’s outstretched swordhand. Dowager Queen Brisquayne, who was sitting next to the grand vizier, re­sponded with a blast of her own, knocking the weapon away from the ex-king.

  Doctor Melanthrix kept Kipriyán from falling back­wards to the floor, and with his left hand sent a charge of ruby lightning right at the queen’s breast, blowing her out of her seat and over the council table
, straight into the arms of the Princes Kiríll and Zakháry. King Arkády sent back a surge of yellow fire at the sorcerer, who warded it off with a wave of his hand.

  Then Sergeant Poliodór rushed his men forward in a direct physical attack on the councilmen. Several arrows from the hidden emplacements at the edge of the hall struck down the advancing rebel guardsmen, but quarters were simply too close thereafter to employ such distant weaponry. When they realized what was happening, Captain Fösse’s men tried desperately to push their way through the throngs of citizens trying to leave the hall, but with only partial success.

  The royal princes soon found themselves fighting for their lives against three or four attackers apiece, using the table and their own backs as aids in the increasingly savage fight. Father Athanasios was confronted by a sword-wielding rebel, who raised his arm and was on the verge of cutting down the cleric when a red beam, appar­ently aimed at the king standing behind him, zapped the guard.

  Patriarch Timotheos was already tending to the wounded, trying to comfort them until help could arrive, while the battle surged around and over him. At one point, he looked up from Queen Brisquayne to see Sergeant Po­liodór preparing to stab Prince Kiríll in the back with his sword, muttered “God forgive me” under his breath, raised his hand as if to give a benediction, and fried the sergeant where he stood with a beam of violet energy. Princess Ar­rhiána cut down another guard with a wave of amber light.

  As the chaos spread over the floor of the hall, up in the king’s apartments the Princess Rÿna was listening to something that her doll Ouisa was telling her. Then she got up, went into the room where her brother Ari was resting, and suddenly pinched him on the arm to the point where he screamed out in pain. In the main room, Queen Dúra jumped up and came running.

  “Call Doctor Melanthrix,” she ordered her daugh­ter.

  “Yes, Mamá,” the girl replied, and grabbing hold of the little silver bell in both hands, clutched it between her palms as if to pray, crushing it so hard that the blood flowed from her flesh onto the hard silver casing.

  “Oh, come to me, Doctor Melanthrix,” she whis­pered, and flung her two hands up into the air to either side, the bell tumbling away from them end over end straight up towards the ceiling, ringing and ringing and ringing, as if the world itself were coming to an end.

  “Ahhhh,” screamed the philosopher, clapping his two hands to each ear, while the battle surged around him. It felt as if someone had stuck a needle right through the middle of his head, causing it to reverberate in waves of sound and terror. He knew what this was, he knew what it meant.

  Off to one side, one of the so-called conference at­tendees smiled to himself, deftly drew a silver-coated throwing knife from its hidden sheath, and in one bold stroke sailed it thirty feet across the room right into the sor­cerer’s back.

  A look of great surprise passed over the face of Doctor Melanthrix, before he fell straight forward onto his face, hitting the floor with an audible “thump.”

  Still the battle ebbed and flowed, as Kipriyán contin­ued to hit his opponents with strokes from his recov­ered sword and with bolts of energy, but his rebel support­ers had now diminished to no more than a dozen, the rest being scattered about the floor like so many discarded pieces from a game, dead or insensate.

  Then Arkády was facing his father head-to-head, but the old king’s strength was fast dissipating, and he found it harder and harder to raise his sword for yet another blow.

  “Die, damn you!” Kipriyán exclaimed, trying for one more killing swing. As his sword descended, Arkády blocked it, swung the weapon to one side, and neatly dis­armed his father.

  “Yield!” he ordered the older man.

  “Never!” Kipriyán responded.

  Then Arkády drew back his arm, wielding his own sword around in a mighty circle, and brought the flat part of the weapon down on his father’s helmet, knocking him senseless.

  “Surrender!” he yelled to the handful of remaining rebels. “Surrender or die!”

  Seeing the inert form of the rebel king stretched out before them, they suddenly stopped what they were doing, and one by one dropped their weapons. Captain Fösse and his men rounded up the six remaining guards of Poliodór’s troop, and hauled them off to a waiting room.

  “God’s death!” the king uttered, looking around him at the bodies strewn all over the council table and floor. He shook his tousled head in frustration.

  “Kir! Zack! Do you live?” he yelled.

  “Here, brother,” shouted Prince Zakháry over the din. He was cradling his brother’s head in his arm. “Kir’s been hurt, but I think he’ll be all right. Where’s the physi­cian?”

  At that moment Fra Tibor appeared, together with several assistants, and they immediately went to work on the ex-king.

  “When you’ve finished treating him, sedate the duke,” Arkády ordered, “and then have him bound.”

  Patriarch Timotheos and Father Athanasios contin­ued to provide spiritual aid and comfort to anyone who needed them.

  “Arkády!” Arrhiána called out urgently. “Over here.”

  The king hurried to his sister, who was bending over the prone body of Dowager Queen Brisquayne. There was a dark singe mark spread across the front of her dress, radiating out from a central point between her breasts. She was breathing heavily.

  “Kásha,” Brisquayne managed to utter, “you must stop the evil. You must find a way to preserve the land. Promise me.”

  “I will, Granny,” the king said, taking one of her hands in his. It was cold.

  “Then I die content,” she gasped.

  “You’re not going to die, Granny,” Arrhiána cried.

  “You’re a good woman, Rhie,” the old queen whis­pered. “You always were. Tell my girls that I love them, that I thought of them at the end.”

  Then she paused a moment.

  “I can see the light, Kásha,” she said. “I must go now. Another is calling me.”

  Then they felt her pass into the beyond, the gates of Paradise swinging wide to admit her.

  Not far away, another, grimmer death was ap­proaching. Arkády and his sister heard a groan, and looked up to see Doctor Melanthrix roll onto his side, grimacing with the effort. They left Brisquayne to join a circle that was slowly forming around the old philosopher, including most of the surviving members of the Royal Council. Arkády felt Father Athanasios come up behind him.

  Fra Tibor looked up from the astrologer’s prone body and shook his head.

  “If I pull the knife, he’ll die immediately,” the doctor noted. “Too many organs have been damaged. And there’s something strange about his anatomy. I can do nothing.”

  Then he moved on to another patient who had greater need of him.

  The patriarch came forward to offer his services, but Melanthrix weakly waved him away.

  “I gave up that nonsense a long time ago,” he wheezed, “and it’s too late to start again now.”

  “It’s never too late,” Timotheos responded. “God has infinite mercy for repentant sinners.”

  “Not for me, father,” Melanthrix replied. “Never for me.”

  He groaned again, and a ripple seemed to wash over his face.

  “I can’t hold it,” the philosopher murmured.

  Then he began to change, slowly at first, and then ever more quickly. Different faces and different bodies ap­peared seemingly at random on his form—men and women of all ages and sizes, as well as a wolf, an eagle, a large snake, a scorpion, and several other beasts—one coming after another in rapid succession, until the changes were happening so fast they could not even be comprehended by the onlookers. Finally, ultimately, he became the body of an old, tired woman with the hilt of a knife sticking out of her back.

  Mösza! King Arkády screamed inwardly, his rings flaring bright red, Aunt Mösza!

  She looked up in his direction, and smiled grimly.

  “Well, my boy,” she gasped between breaths, “‘Ego deum gen
us esse semper dixi et dicam coelitum.’”

  And then, after a pause: “‘Ego pretium ob stulti­tiam fero.’”

  She coughed, blood bubbling daintily from between her lips.

  “Not long now,” she said, chest heaving. Her voice rose to a high pitch: “‘Exoriare aliquis nostris ex ossibus ultor!’”

  Then she shuddered and expired.

  “What was that all about?” Arrhiána asked. She put her hand over her brother’s. “What did she say? Who is she?” she added.

  The Archpriest Athanasios appeared just behind them to offer his assistance.

  “She spoke in the Romanish tongue,” the priest noted. “I know some of that language, and can make a rough translation: ‘I have always said and will say again that there is a race of gods.’ And secondly: ‘I am well re­warded for my folly.’ And thirdly: ‘Rise from my ashes, avenger, rise!’ I don’t know who she is, though; I’ve never seen her before.”

  No one else could identify her, and the king could say nothing, being bound by the oath that he had given to the Covenant of Christian Mages. So her name remained Melanthrix, and Arkády ordered her body carefully wrapped in a blanket and taken to her old quarters, where it was laid out on her bed and the room sealed. He insisted, however, that no one actually touch her bare flesh.

  The monarch next turned his attention to the prone body of Lord Vydór, who was being tended by several physicians, with Lady Antónia hovering nearby, almost hysterical with worry.

  “Will he live?” Arkády and Vydór’s wife both in­quired simultaneously.

  “I think so,” a very harried and frustrated Fra Tibor responded.

  “We’re doing the best we can, sire,” he sniped, re­turning to his work.

  “Oh my goodness gracious,” Lady Antónia de­claimed. “Oh, oh, oh, save him, majesty, oh please save him. Please, sire.”

  She draped herself over the monarch to the point where he had to have one of the guards pry her loose.

  Then Arkády sought out Prince Kiríll, who was stretched out on the council table, and was being bandaged by a young woman the king had never seen before.