As if some invisible bubble had popped, she suddenly became aware of what lay beyond. The sounds of music, of talk and laughter and singing, the scents of roasting meat, of flowers and incense, flowed out of the great hall in a rolling wave of dazzling sensation. Framed by the silver doors as bright as mirrors she could see intense colors in every possible shade and hue; people and creatures talking, laughing, dancing; torches flaming, and bright banners waving languidly in the air of the windowless chamber. It was a three-ring circus and a Roman orgy and downtown Manhattan at high noon on a weekday. It was like walking into the Ginza on a Saturday night after three weeks in a sensory deprivation tank.
She stood where she was, stunned with the shock of it. Living among the Allimir, being with Belegir at the Oracle, had been . . . quiet. Restful, in a weird way. This was noise and bustle and toxic craziness, like being dropped back into Real Life with a jarring, disorienting thump. It was like nothing she'd ever seen—and yet, somehow, it was familiar.
After a long moment, she shook her head and doggedly forced herself forward, dragging Ivradan with her. If all this brought her up short, it must bollix him up twice over.
Glory reached the doorway and stopped again, though she'd sworn she wouldn't. The enormous room was oval-shaped, windowless as she'd guessed, and constructed somewhat after the fashion of an old Roman arena, making her think once more of Roman orgies and decadent mad emperors.
I hope that isn't an omen. . . .
On each of several levels that terraced the room, banqueting tables were laid, with plenty of room for the feasters to move around them. Staircases between the tables led down to the floor, on which dancers were gathered. Though she could see little of the walls themselves, covered as they were with banners and tapestries, if she were to judge by the floor, the castle seemed to be made of mother of pearl inside and out.
The musicians she had heard were gathered in screened platforms hung high on the walls out of harm's way—Glory couldn't quite see how you could get in or out of the boxes—and there were also strolling players working the crowd here and there. Directly opposite the entry doors, set on the highest tier, was a table with only empty terraces gleaming pearlescently below it. The wall behind the table was hung with azure velvet, and there was a gold-fringed canopy above it, and beneath the canopy sat an enormous golden throne upholstered in white velvet, with two smaller thrones beside it, all out of the Little Golden Book for Deranged Medieval Fascists.
Charane sat upon the enormous throne, with Dylan seated at her left hand, looking very much as if Trish was going to rush in any minute and scold him for being out of costume on the set during a dress walk-through. A number of lesser seats were arranged along Charane's table. All those seats were empty, but every other seat here in the Hammer Hall of Horrors was full. As Glory stared at the High Table, a servant came through the draperies to pour wine for Charane and Dylan, so there must be at least one other exit from the chamber. The table was covered with a long white damask cloth (at least if this were a medieval romance it would be damask: it could be polyester for all Glory actually knew), set with plates and goblets of jeweled gold—but only three sets. It looked like Charane had only been expecting two guests for dinner—but which two? Her and Ivradan? Or her and Dylan?
She glanced back. Ivradan was one step behind her, clutching Gordon like grim death and not looking as if he found any of this in the least amusing or even faintly interesting.
Glory looked around the room, eyes narrowed. The Warmother had certainly been busy. Only some of the creatures here were what Glory could properly call human. But she'd gawk at them later. Right now she had an entrance to make.
"C'mon, Ivro. Don't ever let 'em see you sweat," she muttered to her companion in an encouraging undertone. Squaring her shoulders, she strode down the steps on her way to the High Table.
She knew how Vixen would play it, and so Glory played it the same way: head high, face a mask of disdain, looking neither to the left or the right as she made her way down the long flight of steps. Conversation came to a stop as she passed, until by the time she got to the bottom of the stairs the room was completely quiet. Even the musicians had stopped playing. She hoped Ivradan'd had the great good sense to follow her.
Everyone was staring at her, watching her, and at last she realized why this seemed so familiar. Seoul. The Games. Walking into the arena with her mates, and everyone staring. Her heart beat faster. She'd thought then that it was going to be the most important time of her life, the payoff, that what she did there would pay for all the rest. It hadn't been true then, but it was true now.
There was a rustle like pigeons' wings as the dancers moved back to let her pass, and for a moment Glory felt like the heroine in a fairy tale, one of the dark Northern ones that ends badly. She heard the scuffling echo of Ivradan behind her. Then the steps at the far side of the dance floor were before her and she began to climb.
Going up was harder than coming down. She made her mind a blank and concentrated on doing it well. There were no re-takes here. All live, all real.
She reached the top and hesitated. Behind her, the conversation had resumed once more, quietly, and she had the feeling it was all about her. The Hero's Manual did not have a single clear-cut answer to cover this situation. Should she sit down next to the bitch and pretend they were all taking tea at Government House? Sit down at this end where she could reach the stairs easily? Refuse to sit down at all? She supposed it all depended on which kind of hero you were being, and unfortunately Vixen had never been in this sort of situation. She shrugged, and walked behind the table toward the "special guest" chair. Refusing to sit down would be silly, and Charane could probably outrun her or outfly her or something.
Glory pulled the chair out with her foot and eased herself into it as well as she could with the sword in the way. There was no way to really get comfortable without taking the sword off, and she didn't intend to do that. It was her only ace. She plonked her elbows on the long linen-covered table and stared out at the revelry without really seeing it.
The room was full, and only some of its inhabitants could rightly be called human. The Warmother had cast her net wide: there were more upright bear-wolves like the one she'd killed, but better groomed; androgynous golden-scaled bipeds with tall red crests; men shorter than Allimir, but blue-skinned and wearing furs; tall, hard-eyed Amazons in white tunics; bronze-skinned men who could have passed for human anywhere on Earth—in short, trouble in every shape and size and color, mercenaries and sellswords and villains all.
And all of them as out of place as she was. What had Charane told them to bring them here? Was it anything close to the truth? Would any of them rather be back where they'd started from?
She wasn't likely to get any of those questions answered.
Ivradan seated himself dolefully beside her. Glory looked sideways at the Warmother. Charane.
What was it about that name? Glory wished Belegir were with her, or even Englor. She bet either of them would know what it meant. She also bet Charane would have killed either of them outright, rather than playing cat and mouse with them here in Sorceress Barbie's Mystical Castle.
But Charane hadn't killed the Mages out on the Serenthodial. She'd only made a real try for Belegir when he'd gone back to the Oracle. Which meant—and wasn't it just the way, that she figured this out when it was too late to help?—she bet that Belegir could have done something at the Oracle that would have put a spoke in the Warmother's wheel. Too bad neither of the two of them had known it at the time.
But knowing that She had a few vulnerable bits left was comforting. If Ivradan got away—and knowing what Glory knew about Charane, she'd probably want someone to take the news back to the Allimir that their hero had failed—he might remember to tell Belegir what she'd called herself, and then—
Glory smiled a glassy and insincere smile at the amphitheater full of nightmares, groaning inside. She couldn't measure the Allimir by the standards of her mates back h
ome. Even if the information Ivradan brought meant something to Belegir, he wouldn't do anything about it. He'd just curl up and wait to die. And she couldn't exactly blame him. There was something wrong with him—something wrong with all the Allimir.
Which didn't make what Charane here was doing right.
"So. When do we eat?" Vixen the Slayer asked the Warmother coolly.
Charane smiled her catlike smile. "Has the Allimir's precious hero found her courage at last?" she asked.
"Is the tucker here that bad?" Glory asked, still in Vixen's flat American accent.
"Do you think you can—" Charane began.
"Oh, for heaven's sake, Glo, you're not in front of the cameras now!" Dylan said hastily, leaning across Charane. "Save the shtick for your little fans and remember who you really are."
"Yes," Charane echoed meaningfully. "Remember who you really are."
Glory smiled. She hadn't missed the expression on Charane's face when Dylan had interrupted her, the moment when the mask of smiling serenity had slipped to reveal a flash of pure fury. Anybody who could get angry that fast wasn't quite as smug about things as they were putting about.
"But tell me what I can do to entertain you. I'd hate to think you'd come all this way just to be bored," Charane cooed with poisonous sweetness.
Glory stared at her blankly. As far as Glory could tell, the Warmother was the original Bad Hat, but there didn't seem to be any dignity about her evilness. Even supposing you said she was so powerful and so inhuman that she didn't care about the human suffering that she caused—why was she so interested in causing it? If she was that inhuman, how could she calculate the grief she caused to a tax accountant's nicety, killing the Allimir off by inches?
She couldn't.
And if she did know precisely what she was doing, and how much it hurt—and she must—all this pretending she didn't, and making them pretend along with her, was the mark of a particularly nasty, low-minded, undignified bully.
Glory hated bullies. They all knew Charane could kill her, and it was hard to get excited about anything less. And as a matter of fact, this part of things always did bore her, in books and movies and the like—the part where the villain paraded his or her superior might and boasted about his or her plans, showed off whatever Doomsday Machine might be knocking about the shop, and attempted to impress the onlookers with a sense of their vast futility and unimportance.
"Look," Glory said, a little desperately, "could we just skip all the stuff where you explain about how invincible you are and how nobody can stand against you and just get to the part where you try to kill us? Because if you really—"
" 'Try' to kill you?" Charane said, standing up. "Do you think that I cannot? I am War, and Darkness, and the fear that comes for a man in the lonely places. Do you think that I cannot destroy you if I please? I have destroyed the Allimir—"
"Not yet," Glory heard herself say.
Charane stared at Glory as if she'd slapped her.
"They aren't all dead yet," Glory explained reasonably, still hoping they could skip the villain-talk. "So either you can't destroy them, or you can, and you're just toying with them when you know they don't have any way of fighting back. And that isn't exactly the sort of thing they write songs about, you know. It's petty. Lilith Kane doesn't do things like that."
Dylan winced and said something under his breath.
"I will scour the Allimir from the plains of the Serenthodial," Charane said conversationally. She straightened to her full height and spoke to the room at large. "You see here beside me the last hope of the Allimir—the hero their precious Oracle has delivered to them! You know what I am, as she does not: No warrior born of woman, no weapon forged in the world, can unmake my form, yet their Slayer has come here to slay me!"
The room exploded with laughter—nervous and fearful, it was true, but laced with enough mockery to make Glory think that whatever the truth might be, those here in this room believed Charane's words.
And that meant they might be true.
Had Belegir known this, or suspected it? Was this a part of the dream the Oracle had given him? That no matter how many fancy swords Glory had, she'd fail?
And would she have acted any differently if she'd known that?
"But she shall be slain instead, and you, my chosen people, I shall turn loose upon this pleasant realm to reap my red harvest. I shall populate this world with my legions, until all the world runs crimson with War once more!"
There were wild cheers from the creatures assembled below.
"And then what?" Glory asked, getting to her feet as well.
The cheering for Charane continued, banging off the walls and filling the room. It was so loud Glory couldn't hear herself speak, but somehow Charane heard her. The Warmother's head whipped around; she stared at Glory with her blue, blue eyes.
Glory stared stubbornly back. "So the whole world runs red with War. What then? It's just one world."
"Many things," Charane said, though for the first time she sounded ever so faintly uncertain. Glory could hear her plainly, as though the two of them were the only people in the room. "But you will not live to see them, Vixen the Slayer."
Glory sighed, and wondered why it was that nobody here could keep her straight from her character. She'd given it her best shot, but they'd had the threats and exposition part of things after all. She guessed there was a Villains Handbook to go right along with the Heroes one. Someday she'd like to get her hands on the loon who'd written both of them. At least she knew what came next.
She reached back and drew her sword. The crystals along the hilt flared brightly enough to shine between her fingers.
"All right, then," Glory said. Her mouth was dry, but her voice was steady. The frenzied cheering was still going on—these people seemed to be the local equivalent of football fans, willing to shout for hours—and that was another thing that reminded her of home. It didn't matter that the cheers weren't for her. They never had been, not really, but she'd liked hearing them all the same. Somehow, in a strange way, it had always been the cheering that was the important thing, not who it was for.
"Kill her," Charane said simply. She stepped back behind Dylan's chair and spoke directly to him. "Kill her, and I will give you anything you want."
The Warmother reached into her sleeve and set a gun on Dylan's plate.
It was a Webley Mark 6. Her father'd had one like it, handed down from his father, who'd brought it home from the War. It was black and dangerous and utterly out of place in this frothy whipped-cream idiocy of a magic palace. And facing it, Glory might as well be holding a peacock feather as a magic sword.
Dylan stared at it in fascination and horror.
"Kill her?" he asked, as though he wasn't quite sure he'd heard the words correctly.
"You have seen my power. I can give you anything you desire. I can send you home," Charane said. "Just do this one small thing for me."
Dylan reached for the gun, then drew back. He looked at Glory, and she saw honest, naked emotion on his face.
Terror.
In that moment, Dylan MacNee looked every day of his age. A man in his late forties, claiming mid-thirties, who thought youth and illusion was the only thing he had to sell. Who knew that the only relationships in his life would be transactions, and measured his viability by what he had to sell.
"Don't do it, Dylan," Glory said quietly.
"Do, by all means, listen to the golden girl," Charane advised cordially. "She's taken such tender care of you so far, hasn't she?" She leaned over, and spoke into his ear. It was a whisper, but somehow, Glory could hear it clearly, even over the shouting and cheering from the rest of the room.
"Just kill her. No one will ever know. You can go right back home, just as if today never happened. It will all seem like a dream. I'm not asking you for so very much. Haven't you really always wanted to wipe the smug smile off that arrogant no-talent bitch's face? Walking into a starring role that she wouldn't have except for yo
u . . ."
Dylan picked up the gun, shaking his head. He looked miserable.
"I'm sorry," he said to Glory. "I just want to go home."
Glory was still standing flat-footed, still unable to believe he'd fire. The first shot caught both her and Dylan by surprise.
Dylan had been raising the pistol, squeezing the trigger at the same time. It went off unexpectedly, making a sound like the loudest cherry-bomb in the world. The gun jerked up with the force of the shot, and Dylan dropped it.
The bullet passed Glory several inches to the right. She jumped back, turning to look behind her just in time to see Gordon jump up and fill the air with whitish fluff as the bullet passed through him. Ivradan shrieked and went over backwards with his chair.
"You shot my elephant!" Glory screamed.
The quality of the sound in the room changed, but she didn't dare look around. Dylan was down on his hands and knees, searching for the gun among the billowing blue velvet draperies. Glory raised her sword and started forward, knowing even as she did so that she couldn't hit Dylan with it.
She looked for Charane—if she threatened her, could she make this stop?—but Charane was gone.
And Dylan had found the gun again.
He swung around, holding it with both hands this time. Between the shouting and the gunshot, Glory's ears were ringing. She shook her head to clear it, knowing it wouldn't help. She took another step, passing him.
Glory ran.
She didn't know where she was going. She just knew that she didn't want to get shot, and she didn't want Ivradan to get shot, so she ran away from him. Only six bullets in the Webley. Dylan would run out sooner or later. Then she could beat him senseless with her bare fists.
The Warslayer Page 19
