King of Swords (The Starfolk)

by Dave Duncan

  “You know?” Rasalas said softly. “One thing I really hate is licking blood out of my fur.”

  “Me too,” Chertan agreed. They might be offering Rigel a warning or exchanging coded messages about tactics. They would not be indulging in idle humor, because they knew about Saiph and what the likely result would be if the court ordered them to restrain the prisoner.

  “I decline the offer,” Rigel said and jumped clear of the Star. Saiph spun him around and hissed through the air to intercept a leap by Rasalas. Rigel had a momentary vision of two enormous paws with their claws still retracted, just before the sword cut them both off at the metacarpus joint. He leaned sideways to avoid the hurtling mass of disabled sphinx. The plan must have been for the male to knock Rigel down while his female partner secured his sword arm, because Chertan came in from what was now his left but had been his right. He threw the robe over her face and her claws screeched on the marble as she fought for purchase. Then Saiph crashed into the side of her head with sickening results, visible even through the moon-cloth drapery.

  The amulet never wasted a stroke. With total control of Rigel’s muscles, it sent him sprawling, then rolling over onto his back as the Sphinx Alterf arrived in a great bound over the writhing, howling Rasalas. She had her claws out, but Rigel’s dive threw off her aim and Saiph was extended and waiting for her. The blade slashed into her belly, but it must have hit bone on its way through, because the impact slammed Rigel’s shoulder blade against the granite floor so hard he thought it must be broken.

  Apparently not, because he was on his feet again in seconds, still clutching the sword, with three screaming, wounded sphinxes around him and a whole pride of the beasts racing along the hall toward him, like an armored division, scattering the fleeing spectators like fenceposts. Three sphinxes had posed no problem, but could even Saiph possibly hold off a dozen?

  “Stop!”

  Everything stopped.

  Rigel, facing toward the rear, saw the running starfolk sprawl headlong and the sphinxes roll, tumble, and slide. He tottered but stayed upright, probably held there by Saiph. Then the freeze vanished as quickly as it had come.

  “Put up your sword, halfling!” commanded the same voice.

  Blade and gauntlet disappeared. Rasalas was howling for someone to help him, blood pouring from his truncated paws. Chertan lay silent, eyes closed, and only the spreading blood around her showed that her heart must still be beating. Alterf writhed and screamed in agony, with shiny loops of bowel spilling from the slash in her belly. It was the Walmart fight and the Minotaur all over again. Was Rigel fated to kill people on a daily basis from here on out? Freed from the amulet’s control, he fell to his knees, dry-retched twice, and then vomited convulsively.

  Neither Siegfried nor Lancelot would have done that.

  “Healers! Healers to the front!” It was not the regent’s voice; someone else had taken charge of the hall. “Rigel Halfling, come here.”

  Rigel went to wipe his mouth with his arm, discovered that his arm was covered with blood, and promptly upchucked again. When he finally managed to stop heaving, he wiped his mouth with his left arm, clambered to his feet, and turned toward the thrones.

  The royals had gathered on the steps with Counselor Pleione. It was obvious just from the way they were standing that the towering Vildiar was now in command. Rigel tottered up the steps to join the group. The length of the sentence wouldn’t matter, just as long as they’d let him have a quick death by jumping off the ledge on the way to the Dark Cells. But the Dark Cells in Canopus had to be at or below ground level, so there would be no jump. He would just have to drown, then. Even that would be better than going through life as a one-man mass-murdering catastrophe.

  He halted a step below the two women and Kornephoros, feeling very small. The towering Vildiar was one step higher yet, a pallid version of the great jackal-god statues that lined the walls.

  “The killer!” the regent said, enraged.

  “No!” Vildiar was quiet, almost whispering, but his tone cut like a razor. “You were the killer, you idiot. You sentenced the halfling to death, knowing he could not control his amulet.” He could be loud when he wanted, though, and he sent commands thundering through the court: “More healers! Scribes return to your places.” He returned his attention to the wretched Kornephoros, lowering his voice again. “Now what? You have just sacrificed three sphinxes and blackened the queen’s reputation forever by implying that she bore a tweenling baby twenty-one years ago. What happens—”

  “I did nothing of the kind!”

  “You informed everyone that she was the last person to possess the bracelet before it turned up on the halfling’s wrist. You asked questions in public before you had learned the answers in private. Haven’t you even learned that simple lesson in all these years? You aren’t fit to maintain a flowerbed, let alone a kingdom. The half-breed has refused my sponsorship. What are you going to do with him now?”

  Vildiar was calm, austere, a pillar of iced venom; Kornephoros was brick red, trembling with impotent fury. Talitha looked from one to the other with equal contempt.

  “I will sponsor him,” she said.

  Vildiar said, “Do you accept, halfling?”

  “I do, Your Highness.”

  “See that it is so recorded, Counselor. Announce it, Regent-heir, and issue a pardon to the halfling so that the sphinxes don’t try any more stupidity. And then adjourn your audience, Regent-heir. Have you gotten all that? Take his tiny hand and lead him through it, Counselor. Let us see how the wounded fare.”

  He strode off down the steps. Rigel had to run to keep pace with him. Was the crisis over? Apparently he had status now and was sponsored by Talitha. What’s more, he had been pardoned for the fight. Vildiar had arranged all that? Now the villain was on the side of the angels? Who or what, and certainly where, was Mira? The web of lies and deceit seemed more tangled than ever.

  Seven or eight starborn of both sexes were tending the sphinxes. Healers wore blue collars. A few more were inspecting starfolk casualties in the rest of the hall, those who had fallen hard or been trampled in the panic.

  “Well? What’s the toll?” Vildiar demanded.

  A bloody-handed healer rose and bowed to him. “Not as bad we feared at first, Highness. Sphinxes Rasalas and Alterf will recover. We were too late to save Sphinx Chertan.”

  Both of Rasalas’s front paws were heavily bandaged. If the Canopus healers could reattach those, they must be using very powerful magic. Seeing that the sphinx’s eyes were open, Rigel knelt down.

  “I am sorry.”

  The sphinx smiled faintly. “Don’t worry about it. Line of duty.” His finely shaped and oiled beard had become an untidy tangle.

  “I do worry about it.”

  “Can you control that amulet?”

  “No.”

  “Thought not. So I shouldn’t have tried to be a hero.” Rasalas shut his eyes for a moment, then opened them and smiled with pale lips. “But now I can brag that I fought Saiph and lived.”

  “Halfling Rigel, stand on the Star.”

  Rigel turned and found himself looking at a furious Counselor Pleione. “What?”

  “The oath of sponsorship. Stand there!”

  Talitha was standing on the Star already. Rigel joined her, stepping intimately close on the pretext of avoiding a pool of blood. Smiling, she held up her hands and he clasped them.

  “Repeat after me: ‘I, Halfling Rigel, will be your retainer, obeying the laws of the Starlands and your orders, until I die or you release me from this promise.’”

  He did.

  Talitha spoke her lines without prompting. “I, Starborn Talitha, will be your sponsor, maintaining and protecting you until you die or ask to be released from your promise.”

  It was a very simple ceremony, but it was invested with the power of the Star itself.

  “Halfling!” said a new sphinx voice, even more sepulchral than Rasalas’s. The newcomer’s name was Zozma. He w
as a sphinx and a half, with silver in his mane and murder in his eye. “The regent-heir has just issued you a pardon for resisting arrest.” Obviously he did not approve.

  Rigel said, “I did not choose to bear this amulet, and I would take it off and throw it away if I could.”

  Behind him, Talitha said, “I think he means that, commander.”

  Zozma nodded his great head. “Repentance doesn’t undo damage, but it is the first step toward forgiveness. I am glad the prince stopped the slaughter before I lost any more of my officers.” He turned his tail on her and paced away. A Vildiar supporter? A hard-line Vildiar supporter!

  Talitha looked appraisingly at Rigel, as if judging what sort of monster retainer she had just taken on. She did not look as happy over his success as he would have hoped. “Who is that Mira person?” she asked him in an undertone.

  “I was hoping you might know. I heard whispers about Queen Electra.”

  “No.” Talitha frowned, shaking her head. “Electra has too much respect for the crown to ever stage a spectacle like that. Your friend might be Acubens, one of the Naos we thought Hadar and company had killed. There were unanswered questions about her death, and she may well have gone into hiding. Acubens played the fool sometimes. Well, you have status. Congratulations.”

  “Thank you.” He was puzzled by her coolness. “So you have a bodyguard for your son.”

  She said, “Mm. We must find something better for you to wear than that stupid hood.”

  “The archivist said he had a helmet that would suit me.”

  “Good. Perhaps the old rascal has some other help to offer us.”

  Chapter 22

  As they crossed the courtyard, Talitha said, “Father tried very hard to talk me out of sponsoring you, halfling.” Her tone was brittle.

  “How, my lady?”

  “He explained on the barge what Vildiar had told him last night. Vildiar said that ‘whoever’ had tried to kill us yesterday must have been after you, not me or Izar, so to make you Izar’s bodyguard would be putting Izar in harm’s way.”

  They left the courtyard and headed along a shadowed corridor.

  “That’s an open threat to kill me!” Rigel said.

  “Of course it is!” The flush on her cheeks suggested rage, and the backward slope of her ears confirmed it. “Vildiar is a compulsive liar. He doesn’t see any distinction between truth and lies. You heard him deny fathering Tarf, but he used to brag to me about his army of halfling sons, and often listed Tarf among his favorites. He had them address me as ‘stepmother’ because he knew I would hate it.”

  “But his threats?”

  “Oh, you better believe his threats! Father said Vildiar dropped a broad hint that whichever halfling had sent the dragonflies yesterday had been severely punished for nearly killing Izar. But that won’t stop them from trying again. Izar is starting to show the Naos mark, and Vildiar wants him back. He doesn’t want you and Saiph getting in the way. If you are not going to work for him, he wants you out of the picture.”

  “So you want me to stay away from Izar?” Rigel’s sense of triumph faded. She would send him off to run a farm somewhere, be a slave boss.

  “No I do not!” Talitha snapped. “That would be giving up. Hadar and the gang would just grab Izar. And now I’ve seen what you did to the sphinxes. That was so incredible! More than ever I want you to guard Izar!”

  That was better. “With my life, I promise.”

  “If Hadar and his gang appear, dice them!”

  They descended a wide staircase. There were few other people around, but those few all cleared a path, kneeling to let Talitha pass and staring in horror at Rigel’s bloodstains.

  “Vildiar impressed me,” Rigel said. “He knows how to take charge in an emergency.” The giant had displayed remarkable leadership. Kornephoros had fallen apart, but not Vildiar. By abandoning his efforts to obtain the amulet, he had turned on a dime, conceded a battle but not the war, and shown up the regent-heir as a feckless ruler, if not an outright fool. Where would he strike next?

  “Oh, I do not question his competence,” Talitha said bitterly. “He’s clever, ambitious, utterly unscrupulous. He’s not even a sadist, like Hadar and Tarf and some of the others. I’m sure Vildiar regards sadism as a weakness because sadists may let their cravings distract them from important matters. It serves his purpose to encourage perversions in his goons. They can use terror and brutality to bring in the results he needs, yet these very qualities make them hated and feared and vulnerable to the law. So they become more dependent on him since he protects them from retribution or punishment. On the other hand, if sadism were needed—if he had a reason to torture someone, say—then he would be worse than any of them.”

  “Let’s talk about nicer things,” Rigel said. “You promised me a kiss when I got status.”

  “Did I?” she asked, but her doubt was not convincing. “Well, it will have to wait for a more private place. And it will be a very short, maidenly kiss.”

  “But I shall have to return it, and mine will be a longer, manly kiss.”

  “Leading where?”

  “Let’s not plan anything specific,” he said. “We can just see where it goes.”

  Talitha drew a deep breath. “Halfling, the thought of a romance with you is far from displeasing, but it is just not possible. I am very happy to have you as my retainer, and I hope you will remain with me for however many centuries you will live. I have every confidence in your ability to be Izar’s guardian, and I promise that you will always have worthy employment and respect in my household when he grows up. I have already apologized for your encounter with Alniyat. That will not happen again.”

  He wondered how long it had taken her to prepare that speech. And how long he would have to wait for the kiss. He would get it eventually. It would be his life’s ambition.

  They had come to a long courtyard with a reflecting pool. “You can wash there,” she said.

  Cleaning off bloodstains was becoming a habit. Rigel stepped down and then knelt. The water was unpleasantly warm. Several starborn in the distance stared at his antics with obvious disapproval. Well, the people of the Starlands would have to get used to him.

  “Izar is terrified of his half brothers,” Talitha said. “You saw.”

  “I did. And I don’t blame him; so am I. To defend him I must know more about magic. You saw Mira use it. How did she manage that vanishing trick? Can you teleport like that?”

  “No one can teleport. What she did was this, and I can’t do it as well as she did.” Talitha faded and became transparent. She did not quite disappear and her shadow lingered as a prismatic shimmer on the flagstones. “Maybe with another century’s worth of practice,” she said—and even her voice seemed faint—“I’ll be able to go the whole way.” She popped back to solidity with a whoof! of relief.

  “I suppose Vildiar can do that?” Rigel said glumly.

  “Certainly. And Kornephoros. It’s a terrific strain, though. No one could do it for long.”

  “Electra?”

  “Of, course—if she would still bother.”

  “Hadar?”

  “No. Invisibility is a form of dissembling.”

  “He can’t dissemble, make himself look like you, say?”

  “No. No halfling can. Dissembling is an ongoing process, and it can’t be stored in an amulet. Only starfolk of at least green talent can dissemble.”

  That was good news, and it supported what the Minotaur had told him. Rigel climbed out of the pool and adjusted his cowl. They set off along the courtyard. He had much to learn before he could be of real use, but meanwhile he had a future, an important job to do, an enemy to hate—even a girl to love, although he might have to endure agonies of jealousy and frustration for years without getting what he wanted. Nevertheless, every day was going to be bright and new and exciting from now on. He was also drawing closer to the end of his quest.

  “I must find Mira again. Is there a magical way to find out
who she really is or why she was stalking me back on Earth? Or what both Tarf and Fomalhaut were doing there, if she spoke the truth?”

  “She spoke the truth. She spoke on the Star, and I doubt if even Electra herself…” Talitha stopped dead. “Halfling! You don’t think… You can’t possibly think…”

  “Why not?” Why not a human father and a starborn mother?

  Talitha laughed, which was an improvement upon her previous worried mood. “Because I know Electra! Not well, but when I was young she took me boating, and we sang madrigals together. I just cannot imagine her doing what you suggest! It’s impossible! She’s not as straightlaced as my father, but she… she just wouldn’t!”

  They resumed their journey. He said nothing, just left wet footprints on the paving. Talitha read his thoughts from his face.

  “Halfling Rigel,” she said as if she were breaking bad news to a small child, “mudlings are farm workers and porters and latrine cleaners… I cannot imagine Electra losing her head over some husky young gardener. They would have absolutely nothing in common.”

  But she was the last person known to have handled Saiph before it turned up on the wrist of baby Rigel somewhere in Canada. “Would it be possible for an eighteen-hundred-year-old starborn to bear a child?”

  Talitha sighed. “Why not? All right, let’s just suppose the inconceivable happened, and she conceived a child by a human male. That I could maybe, possibly, perhaps, hypothetically, just for the sake of argument, suppose. But I am absolutely certain that my Greatmother Electra would never callously abandon a baby in the way you were abandoned, in another world, in poverty, with no support, no identity. That I absolutely cannot believe of her.”

  “I see.” He nodded. That argument was more convincing. Whoever his parents were, at least one of them was a first-class swine.