King of Swords (The Starfolk)

by Dave Duncan

  Graffias dived for the portal and swung it open. Rigel bowed to the prince and followed. He did not try to seal the portal behind him with the Grumium password, because he was certain that the mage would simply use an override to open it again.

  Chapter 37

  He stepped through into another starfolk playground, like the Alrisha swimming hole. It was a sheltered bay ringed by steep cliffs with only a narrow channel connecting it to the sea. There were all the usual conveniences on hand: shady trees, a waterfall, a sandy beach, and mossy banks. A few meters away, Talitha was still embracing her son, and the look of relief that swept across her face when she met Rigel’s eyes made every moment of the terrible night seem worthwhile. Graffias turned his back on her, hiding his shame.

  Rigel said, “Race you, halfling,” and sprinted toward the water. They hit the surface together. It was a very brief dip, followed by a quick sprint to the waterfall to rinse off, but it rid Rigel of the swamp smell and turned Graffias’s jeans a uniform wet blue. By the time the two of them returned to the beach, Izar was recovering some traces of his customary toothy smile. He had seen horrors, but his ability to turn himself off at will had hopefully saved him from serious trauma.

  Talitha gave Graffias a cold glare. “Izar tells me that you were one of the raiders at Spica, but that you’re on our side now?”

  “I have much to tell, Your Highness.”

  “That is good, very good. It is long past time. Consider yourself under arrest at present, but I am sure Her Majesty will grant you a full pardon if you answer every question put to you on the Star, in which case I shall be happy to sponsor you.” Then she turned to Rigel with a smile that demanded to be instantly and thoroughly kissed.

  So he did.

  After a while, Izar said, “I thought grown-ups laid down to do that?”

  Rigel released her, which wasn’t easy. Graffias looked appalled—a princess allowing a mere halfling to take such liberties?

  Talitha turned away and headed for the portal. “You left in such a hurry,” she said over her shoulder, “that we didn’t set up a proper rendezvous. There are a dozen portals in Alsafi. I came here because I knew it was Izar’s favorite. Cheleb is watching another. So that is where we must go first.”

  She led the way to a cobbled yard enclosed by stables and sheds on three sides, and a rambling, thatched house on the fourth. It had a dovecot and pigeons and a sleeping dog, as if inspired by some syrupy calendar art. The only otherworldly touch was the open carriage that sat at its center. It had the customary large wheels at the back and a smaller pair at the front, two upholstered benches, and a canopy, which was currently folded down, but it lacked shafts to hold a horse, and had no visible means of propulsion—unless, Rigel decided, one counted Starborn Cheleb as such. She was dozing on the coachman’s box, her back erect but her head down, hair shining copper in the dawn sun, ears drooping.

  Izar said, “Where’s Dschubba? I wanna see Dschubba!”

  “I expect he’s still asleep,” said his mother. “His father said we could borrow their carriage.”

  “Doggy! You going to drive, Mom?”

  Cheleb came alert, swept her gaze over the arrivals, and deigned to grant Rigel a nod of approval. “I did not expect to see you again, halfling. Very well done.”

  Praise indeed! He bowed and said, “Thank you, starborn,” with all the grace he could muster.

  “Will you drive, please?” Talitha asked her. “And let Izar ride on the box? Halfling Graffias has turned queen’s evidence. I must hear some of his testimony so that I can properly advise Her Majesty.”

  Izar’s happiness fizzled in an instant. “Wanna stay with you and Rigel. I’m not comp’etely recovered yet. You have to be specially consid’rate of my needs.”

  “Starborn Cheleb wants to hear all about your adventure.”

  His lip trembled. “I have to sit between you two so you don’t misbehave.”

  Talitha kept her patience. “You keep telling me you want to start highway training. Starborn Cheleb will give you a lesson. Won’t you, starborn?”

  “Of course,” the mage said, although her expression would have turned princes into things much lowlier than frogs. Izar hesitated while he evaluated the bribe, then he grinned and scrambled up to the box in a swirl of twiggy limbs.

  Talitha had a royal knack for getting her own way. Rigel handed her up to the carriage, then joined her on the rear bench, wrapping his arm around her. Graffias sat facing them. The carriage soared upward, narrowly clearing the rooftops, and swung around to the east.

  “We don’t have long,” Talitha said, being very businesslike despite—or perhaps because of—the nearness of Rigel’s hand to her right breast. “I don’t recall meeting you when I lived at Phegda.”

  “No, Your Highness. I just graduated from Unukalhai three months ago.”

  “Tell me what you know. I promise that nothing you say on this journey will be used against you, although you will be interrogated later on the Star. You’ve been extroverting?”

  Graffias nodded guiltily. “It’s part of the training. To qualify as full members of the Family…”

  “Go on!”

  “We have to kill an earthling—a wild one, not a domestic.”

  “Stars!” Talitha looked at Rigel in horror.

  He shrugged, not surprised. He guessed that there would be even more lurid revelations to come; Graffias would best help his cause by making his testimony top every rumor. “Tell Her Highness about Spica.”

  “Oh, that was Botein’s doing, my lady. She was at Canopus with a squad of us, standing by in case V… that’s Prince Vildiar, our father. In case he needed us. Tegmine arrived and said that V wanted Izar, and Izar had been sent to Spica. Botein decided to make a grab…”

  Graffias’s story closely followed what the Pythia had told Sphinx Praecipua. Five men and two women had gone to Spica in two carriages. It had seemed like an easy prospect—ambush the imp in the fields, kill or intimidate his attendant, Baham, and leave with both of them. Alive or dead, Baham could be fed to the polliwogs at Giauzar, and there would be no evidence. The plan had gone terribly awry when Izar unleashed Turais.

  “We never thought,” Graffias said, “that an imp like him would be trusted with anything like that. A Lesath! None of our amulets worked on it! It killed Ain and Homam and Haedi and damned nearly ripped Botein’s hand off. I put three arrows through its heart before I dropped it.”

  Graffias did not repeat what Hadar had said about him—that he had heaved his guts out at the scene of the massacre—but by the time he finished the story, he was weeping. He was either a very good actor or a very poor terrorist.

  “Frankly, I wish it had killed all of you,” Talitha said. “His Highness could not have been pleased.”

  “Hadar made Botein tell V herself,” Graffias said. “I wasn’t there, thank the stars. And right after that came the news that Halfling Rigel had taken out Tarf, Adhil, and Muscida at Canopus.”

  The world lurched. Izar’s driving lessons had begun in earnest, and he was at the helm. Rigel tightened his grip on Talitha, for the carriage had no sides to prevent passengers from falling out, although that might be a more pleasant death than whatever Hadar was undoubtedly planning for him. The carriage tilted nose-down and then nose-up.

  Then it dropped like a cliff diver.

  “That’s enough driving for today!” Talitha shouted. “I don’t want any more funerals, thank you!” The descent slowed and stopped just above tree height. She continued talking as if nothing had happened. “And now Rigel has rescued my son and helped you defect.”

  “And killed Hassaleh,” Graffias agreed. “You must be very careful in the future, halfling! The Family has very rarely been bested in anything, and will avenge its own. Just because V let you go today doesn’t mean that you’ve been forgiven.”

  “I never dreamed that it did,” Rigel said. “And I don’t believe that he’s going to leave Botein, Sadalbari, and Benetnash locked up i
n Giauzar to starve to death, either.”

  Graffias looked blank. “You don’t? But we heard him tell—”

  “We were meant to hear him tell Hadar all that. They knew we were inside that door the whole time.”

  Talitha pulled a face. “Tell us about the Family.”

  If she was planning to bring all of Graffias’s evidence to light that day—presumably right after the funeral, while the court was still packed with mourners—anything might happen. Rigel decided that he was giddy with fatigue and needed to catch some sleep if he hoped to guard Izar during the coming riot or revolution. He was not at all interested in Graffias’s description of the prince’s nursery at Unukalhai, with its regular output of halfling babies. He leaned his head back and closed his eyes.

  Chapter 38

  Cheleb landed the carriage in a relatively small courtyard in the palace, one that Rigel had not seen the previous day. He jumped down to offer a hand to Talitha, and by that time sphinxes and starborn were already closing in around them. Izar had moved very close to Rigel, practically leaning on him. Commander Zozma bounded in from a side alley and pushed his way to the front of the throng.

  He bowed. “Welcome back, Your Highness. And your noble son is a very welcome sight as well.” He bowed to Izar, who grinned delightedly at this homage. His ears seemed to sprout even longer.

  “He is indeed,” Talitha said. “And this, as you can see, is Halfling Graffias. He is going to give—”

  “Her Majesty wishes to see you urgently, Your Highness.”

  Talitha frowned. “This is urgent too. Graffias is a very valuable and willing witness. See that he is treated with respect, decently clad, and, if time permits, fed. And above all, make sure that he is well guarded! Cheleb, dear, will you also keep an eye on him, please?”

  A lobster’s smile could not be thinner-lipped than the mage’s. “I would do so even if you did not ask me, my lady. I do hate the smell of fried sphinx.”

  “Thank you. Commander, see that Izar and Rigel are guarded also. Now escort me to the queen.”

  Zozma started barking orders.

  “I hope you’re hungry, Izar Imp,” Rigel said. “Because I could eat a cat.”

  “Don’t push your luck, halfling,” said a familiar voice from behind him.

  Rigel turned. “My luck is unbeatable at the moment, Sphinx Praecipua. It carries all before it. How are Rasalas and Alterf?”

  “On the mend. We all feel rather inadequate since you came on the scene. And you, imp—congratulations on your adventure. You have an incredible bodyguard.”

  “He’s not bad,” Izar conceded, his grin almost as wide as it usually was.

  “If you are really hungry, I can catch a harpy for you, but you’ll have to eat it quickly. Come along.”

  Praecipua set off at a lope, with Rigel and Izar running behind him and Sphinxes Kalb and Adhafera bringing up the rear. In moments Rigel and his ward were seated cross-legged on mats in front of a low table, gobbling food that was definitely not raw harpy. The three sphinxes crouched around them, listening intently while Izar recounted his kidnapping and rescue, speaking and eating at the same time and at the same frantic pace. Just as halflings were a seemingly random collection of elfin and human features, so Izar was a curious hybrid of child and adult. Despite his looks, he had almost as much life experience as Rigel did. He babbled out his story in far more detail than Rigel would have considered necessary or even proper, for he was not addressing a formal investigation, just three nosey palace cops. And yet when Kalb Sphinx asked him where he had gotten the Turais amulet, he avoided her question as slickly as any crooked ward boss stonewalling a grand jury. It took Rigel a minute or two to realize what he had done, and that it had not been an accident.

  Somewhere a drum began to beat, and the sphinxes instantly jumped to their paws.

  “Fill both hands, imp,” Kalb said. “Eat on the way. You are needed at the funeral.”

  Izar contented himself with carrying off a stuffed papaya in each hand. “I don’t like funerals,” he told Rigel sulkily as they walked along.

  “How many have you been to?”

  “Three. All killed by Vildiar.”

  “I really don’t think you should say that here. I have never been to a funeral in the Starlands, so tell me what happens.”

  The ceremony was held in the Great Court where Rigel had almost died the previous day, but what happened was not what Izar remembered and tried to describe, because this time he was family. He was herded about by flustered starfolk wearing a variety of dazzling collars, who repeatedly tried to send Rigel away. Others ordered the imp to “Get rid of that food,” but were no more successful—Izar just smiled mushily at them until they turned away in revulsion. Eventually the deceased’s grandson was inserted into his proper place within the various family groups arrayed on the wide steps before the throne. In nine hundred years a man could produce a sizable tribe of descendants, all of whom were displayed on the right in order of descent. Having died young, Kornephoros was also survived by many ancestors, and they stood on the left. In all, there must have been two hundred family members on display, and that excluded anyone more than seven generations removed, because there were only seven steps. All others had to stand with the rabble on the floor.

  As the only halfling present, Rigel was the target of innumerable furious glares. Talitha was not yet in sight, but when she arrived, she would join Kornephoros’s half a dozen other sons and daughters on the top step, one up from Izar. Prince Vildiar was down in the body of the court, towering over everyone, the only Naos royalty present. There would have been numerous others if he had not contrived their absence—did he sense their ghosts?

  Despite its size, the great courtyard was packed with starfolk, sphinxes, halflings, humans, centaurs, cyclops, and some miscellaneous species too far away for Rigel to identify. They had come to mourn the starborn who had ruled them for the last generation, and to catch a glimpse of their revenant Queen Electra. There was something odd and muted about the light, as if the sun itself was mourning.

  The sphinxes officiously herded mourners out of a center aisle that included the black Star of Truth and the catafalque beyond it, where the deceased lay in a plain wooden casket. Although the queen had said that the heir’s golden collar of office would stay with him until his pyre was lit, Rigel could not see it on display. He wondered uneasily if Electra might change her mind and present the heir’s insignia to Talitha instead. That would surely be a spider kiss, unless the queen was prepared to denounce Vildiar and somehow lock him up in the Dark Cells. And if Vildiar was not chosen, Talitha was the only possible alternative. Damnation! She certainly did not want that honor, and Rigel did not want it for her.

  What was going on with the light? The day seemed to be dimming without consideration for the early hour. Rigel raised a foot and flexed his toes to let the sun shine through them. As he had guessed, the image of the sun was distorted. He bent down to speak in Izar’s ear.

  “Do not look at the sun, but there’s going to be an eclipse.”

  “Of course there is.”

  End of conversation.

  The crowd rumbled constantly, as restless as the ocean. Starfolk were not used to being kept waiting, to being bored, to enduring distasteful realities like funerals. The old should just fade away gracefully. Now the light was definitely fading, and it was past time for the ceremony to begin. What was taking so long?

  At last silver trumpets screamed their fanfare, quenching all other noise. Out from behind the great carved throne came—Talitha! She walked over to join her numerous half brothers and half sisters, all of them centuries older than she, and none of them Naos. She was bent and huddled like a waif caught in an Arctic storm, as if she bore a world of trouble on her shoulders. Her eyes sought out Rigel’s bronze helmet, and the look she gave him was heavy with horror. Something terrible had happened, he had no doubt, but although she was just one step away from him, he could not go to her.

&nb
sp; “What’s wrong with Mom?” Izar muttered, provoking angry shushing noises from the geriatric beauties who surrounded him.

  Rigel put a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t worry!” He would do the worrying for both of them, and it would do them no good at all.

  The sun had slimmed down to a crescent when the queen emerged from behind the throne, leaning heavily on the arm of her human secretary, Alfred.

  “What’s wrong with HER?” Izar demanded. Fortunately his shout was lost in a universal cry of dismay.

  Izar had never seen Queen Electra before. Nor had he ever seen an old starborn. Nobody ever saw an old starborn. Electra had aged several centuries overnight. Even in the near darkness her starry aura had faded and shrunk to a faint glow around her neck, and her opalescent hair had lost its sheen. Shuffling unsteadily, peering around as if she were almost blind, she let Alfred guide her to the throne. He stepped aside but did not go very far. He was clearly aghast at what had happened, but somehow that made him look younger, not older.

  According to the Izar’s program, there would now be “a lot of schmoory singing” but that didn’t happen. Electra cut straight to the end of the program.

  “My people,” she said. In fact she managed only a hoarse whisper, but the magical acoustics carried the words throughout the vast courtyard. “My friends.” She needed a rest then, to catch a bubbling breath.

  After a lifetime of searching, Rigel Estell had found his mother last night. He was about to lose her again, this time forever.

  “I killed Kornephoros,” the queen said. She waited out the hubbub, and then began again, growing a little stronger, but still halting every few words to catch her breath. “I should never have made him my heir. He did not want it, and that was his greatest virtue in my eyes. Others were too old, too young, too lazy, or too greedy for the title. He had no spark, no soul, but I knew young Korny would do his best…