“My queen!”
Tandu turned into a writhing onslaught of flesh and bone and sinew, striving against the chains.
The witch laughed. “This woman is, also, as you will doubtless know, the Queen of Djanduin.”
Her pure childlike face turned toward Jilian. Brightly she looked upon the Sweet-Tooth.
“Jilian. You are a Sister of the Whip. I have said the kovneva will not make you fight your friend, the empress. But, for me you will fight her. For me you will cut her and cut her again, and slay her into little pieces. For me, for Fiacola the Gaze, for I have the power over you, Jilian Sweet-Tooth.”
Watching her friend, Delia felt the agony for her, the sorrow. Jilian trembled. She swayed. Her pallor now turned her face more icy than Nyleen’s. Sweat dropped.
“You have the power, Fiacola. And I believed you.”
“Continue to do so. What is there that can stand against what I may make you do? Fight the empress, Jilian! Fight and cut and kill!”
As though a mere inconsequential irritation in the clash of wills, Nyleen chattered out quickly: “If this is true! It must be true! Then we have won! But, Jilian — fight her as Fiacola commands. But I do suggest you do not kill her. Let us chain her up and let her die — differently — yes?”
“Chain her up?” said Jilian. She swayed. “Fight Delia to the death and then not kill but turn her over to you for...”
“Only if Fiacola approves, of course.”
Watching her friend, Delia said nothing.
Jilian’s bare left hand brushed the dark hair back from her forehead where it immediately fell back into that curved line above her eyebrows. “Lace up her Claw,” she said to the Battle Maiden plucking at the lacings. “Fetch my balass box.”
Delia sucked a breath.
The box was rushed in and placed upon the table, and all the time Tandu struggled and writhed and roared. No one paid him any attention. Jilian unlocked the box and threw the lid back. She withdrew her Claw. That glittering fang of death was a supreme example of the Jikvar armorer’s art. She glanced across at Nyleen.
“You would do what you say, kovneva?”
“Of course. What else? Now, Jilian, my dear, do as Fiacola commands and let us get on with this evening. It is going to be absolutely splendid now. Now that the empress will be dead we can all go forward with much greater heart. It is so exciting.”
The Sweet-Tooth moved as a bamboo and paper puppet moves behind the screen in a shadow play. Always a girl of a brooding and intense nature, she now seemed to draw in upon herself. She spoke in a slurred way. “You command me, Fiacola the Gaze?”
“I command, Jilian, and I have the power over you.”
The Claw turned in Jilian’s right hand, turned and lifted and positioned ready to be fitted snugly up over her left hand and arm. Each steel segment, cunningly curved, articulated, oiled, catching sparkles of fire from the torchlights, would be honed to razor sharpness. Once that hand of death fastened on Delia’s face...
Delia said: “Fiacola claims she has the power, Jilian. And you have been led into a belief she speaks the truth.”
Fiacola’s head swiveled from her rapt attention upon Jilian to stare in a liquid crimson gleaming upon Delia.
“Silence! Shastum!”
“Fiacola the Gaze,” said Delia, and she felt a stroking pressure upon her, like spider silk drawing and tightening. She lifted her head. “You claim to be a witch. But there are powers of which you know nothing.” The contempt in Delia’s voice flayed as the lash flays in a flogging jikaider. “You do not feel. There are powers beyond your puny comprehension.”
“I command this girl, and she will surely cut you and slay you into little pieces—”
“You, Fiacola the Malignant, command nothing. You may deceive this pitiful creature Nyleen and her abhorrent cronies. I do not think you can command against those powers of which you know nothing.”
The childish features contorted. “I am Fiacola the Gaze! I have powers! Jilian — cut her, kill her, slay her into little pieces! I command you!”
The crimson gleam remained fast set upon Delia. She faced that Gaze, unflinching. She could feel the spider strands drawing upon her mind, and she resisted. There was no other chance of life beyond this...
“Jilian,” said Delia, and her voice rang and soared. “Jilian!”
Instantly, Tandu’s roarings subsided. The witch, her gaze fixed on Delia, flinched. The Sweet-Tooth moved her head in a peculiar sideways motion.
“There is no hope for you, Delia of Delphond, Empress of Vallia.” The witch chattered and her childish features twisted in concentration. The spider strands tightened.
Jilian said: “You command me to destroy my friend, witch. Your power is great. But Delia and I have a power, too. It is a power you fear and abhor because you cannot feel it.”
And Jilian Sweet-Tooth reached her left hand up to her neck and drew one of the three terchicks that snugged in their sheaths over her shoulder, and threw. The throwing knife glinted just once as it streaked. The point penetrated Fiacola’s right eye, and the blade went in up to the hilt.
Had the witch turned into a puff of blue smoke, Delia, for one, would not have been surprised.
The spider strands slithered unpleasantly, like cobwebs brushed aside in the dark, and vanished.
Nyleen shrieked, purple-faced. Her shock at the revelation that Alyss the slave who played the harp so divinely was the empress had been followed by joy that the woman was under her hand at last. And now — now the witch was dead. All her icy pallor fled. Engorged, she screamed orders. In a trice Delia and Jilian were overborne and chained. Nyleen cast a single glance at the crumpled body in its hooded gown. Fiacola the Gaze was dead. There were other witches. The scheme must go on. She must have the empress killed — kill her herself! — and then marry the emperor and destroy him. Then she, Nyleen, would be Empress of Vallia. The scheme would work...
The dagger held aloft, she advanced upon Delia.
Tandu roared at her. His magnificent Djang head lifted and he told her something that brought the breath short between her teeth.
“Your tongue will be cut out, rast, I promise you!”
Dalki shouted across, adding to what his father had said, amplifying, going into graphic details. His description of Nyleen drove the color from her face. Her body shook in its panoply of gems and gold and silks. She looked like an Ice Queen of Myth, a Queen of Pain of Loh. The dagger trembled violently.
Delia heard Jilian say: “Once we get out of these chains we will make a bonny fight of it. Delia — I knew nothing—”
“Yes, Jilian. I know.”
“How can you know? How can you trust me—?”
“I thought I knew my Jilian Sweet-Tooth. And I was right. I did. Fiacola the Gaze did not, for all her sorcery.”
“... pasty-faced, impotent, sag-chested, knock-kneed, moustached, bladder of a woman,” quoth Dalki, merrily, going on into further disparaging descriptions of Nyleen.
She rushed at him, foaming, the dagger lifted. She struck wildly at his head. He moved his head sideways and the dagger gouged into the wood of the stake and stuck, lodged fast.
Nyleen pushed in against the chained man whose two arms were viciously chained around the back of the stake and whose legs were chained all the way from thigh to foot. She reached up past his head for the dagger. The next time she would not miss.
She reached up, her body straining in the silks and tissues, looped with gems. She remained there. She lifted a little onto her toes. Dalki’s arms, chained around the back of the stake, quivered with some intense exertion. Nyleen did not reach farther for the dagger, did not move, just stood there on tiptoe, pressed against Dalki.
Delia saw the Djang’s face. He was not a real Djang, for he had but the two normal arms; but he thought and acted like a Djang. That face was compressed with effort, the eyeballs starting, the veins throbbing in the forehead, the mouth clamped and white with strain. Sweat rolled down Dalki�
�s Djang face.
And the kovneva remained on tiptoe, pressed against him.
The women began to fidget, to call out. Ilka left the body of the witch and walked down the line of tables. The werstings snuffled and yowled. Jikai Vuvushis began to chatter among themselves. Some looked around in a bewildered way, as though wondering where they were.
And, still, Nyleen, Kovneva of Vindelka, remained unmoving on tiptoe, straining against Dalki.
Delia saw an odd movement at the kovneva’s neck.
Something lifted there, like a collar, lifted and withdrew.
Nyleen fell.
She collapsed and sprawled to the floor.
Ilka reached her, bent, looked, turned and screamed: “The kovneva is dead!”
Jilian said, “And about time too. I am ready to throw off my chains, Delia.”
“And I.”
Delia, about to discard the chains that the inattentive guards had allowed to loosen, steadied herself. Just before she broke loose she looked not at Nyleen, dead upon the floor; but at Dalki. She saw.
His father was a Djang, no matter that his mother had been apim. Dwadjangs have four arms. Dalki, too, had four arms. But the second pair of arms were truncated, tiny, as long only as half a forearm each. But the hands were broad and powerful. Those hands withdrew into the rents in his tunic. They might have looked pathetic, muscular hands that could only just touch each other across his chest. They might have done. But those hands had taken Nyleen’s throat between them and choked her out of this world.
Dalki had worked on his chains with those hidden hands, and now he stepped free and raced for his father as Delia and Jilian cast down their chains and raged out. Jilian’s Claw went on in a twinkling. Her rapier licked out. Delia found the first rapier to hand, for the guard would no longer require the blade, and the two girls ranged shoulder to shoulder.
Not a single woman in the refectory would care to challenge one of them. Now there were two...
“This will be a bonny fight,” said Jilian. “If we are lucky it might be dubbed a Jikai.”
“It is nice,” said Delia in her decisive way, “to have friends.”
There was little need to spell out to Jilian what Nyleen had intended. She made no further attempt to explain away her conduct. There was no explanation this side of the black arts.
Delia said, “Now the witch and Nyleen are gone, I think these poor fools will come to their senses. I hope so. I would like to avoid more fighting.”
“So would I,” said Jilian, making her Claw catch the lights of the torches and splinter back silver stars from each razored talon. “So I dearly would. But someone has warned that cramph Cranchar. Here he comes.”
The doors burst open, and Cranchar and his henchmen rushed in, brandishing weapons, roaring for the devils who had slain Fiacola the Gaze.
Over the uproar, Delia called: “Cranchar! See to your sister.”
He saw the limp gaudy form, cradled in Ilka’s arms. His face bludgeoned. He stood stock still. He put the gauntleted hand gripping his sword to his forehead. In a low mad voice, he said: “Then are you all dead. Dead!”
“No!” shouted Nath the Muncible, striding forward with Sissy defiant and yet palpitating at his side. “There has been death enough to warm the Ice Floes of Sicce with spilled blood.”
Tandu ripped the last of the chains free as Dalki helped him. Tandu stared up, engorged.
“My queen! Is this the chief rast?” Without waiting for an answer he leaped for Cranchar.
Cranchar was a dead man then. But Tandu caught his foot in a loop of chain and tumbled head over heels, all four arms going like a windmill, rolled into the tables and brought two or three down with pots of wine cascading onto his head. He roared.
Nath the Muncible was pushed out of the way as Cranchar hared for the door. He screamed at his men. They stood undecided, or followed him, or started to attack. Those that chose the latter course no longer figured in the annals of Kregen. Jordio the Hawk and Lathdo the Eager, freed, snatched up weapons.
Delia called above the hubbub, commandingly, as befitted an empress.
“I desire no further bloodshed. But I think Cranchar the Cranchu should not be allowed to escape. He did plan to kill the emperor, and that cannot be allowed to pass.”
Men — and Jikai Vuvushis — ran out after the Cranchu.
He was a poor figure, Delia considered, broken now that his sister was dead. But anyone at all who attempted ill against the emperor her husband must know he ran in peril of his life. Some of the Jikai Vuvushis came forward, and some made the greetings of the SoR, and some of other Orders, and they bent the knee to Delia, Empress of Vallia.
She had to put up with this. For one thing, it meant the girls were getting back to sanity and order could be restored. For another, it was a visible proof that the thralldom imposed by the witch was passing. Some of Nyleen’s cronies might not be happy, might plot revenge; they would have to be handled with tact and firmness.
Nath the Muncible walked forward. He held Sissy around the waist.
“Majestrix,” he said. “I crave your forgiveness—”
Sissy goggled up. “Alyss! Are you really the empress?”
“Hush, dear heart,” said Nath, discomposed. Jilian laughed and Tandu and Dalki bristled up. Lathdo the Eager bustled forward, ready to perform his duties.
Delia quashed it all.
“Yes, Sissy, dear, I am the empress. And if you and Nath are as happy as the emperor and me—” Then she stopped. That was a poor promise for a couple. Of course, these two would not face the near-inconceivable horrors faced by the emperor and empress. “You must be happy, Sissy. Nath, I believe I do understand your problems. You have done ill, but that, too, will wash away with time. Just take care of Sissy.”
“Quidang, majestrix!”
Then they came back with the report that Cranchar the Cranchu had jumped off the topmost turret of the tower rather than be brought back to the empress to face his just punishment.
Delia sighed.
“He wasn’t much of a man.”
In the refectory as elsewhere in the fortress the rapidity with which order was restored was a result not so much of the fact that Delia was an empress as from the force of her personality, the way she instantly decided and commanded, the air of complete confidence she radiated. No one could suspect her own inner doubts. The Sisters of the Rose gathered, still dazed, yet forming a formidable force to support not only their empress but the Flower of the SoR.
A quivering lump of male humanity hovered around at the back of Nath and Sissy. Stertorous breathing and the creak of harness — and a man mountain of flesh, sweating, shaking, totally shattered, protruded into view, and dodged back, and so shambled forward again. Delia did not laugh. What happened here could be taken as the signpost for future actions, and people who did not know the ways of her husband and herself might easily react with the cynicism born of harsh life under authority.
“Nath! Tell Magero to step forward.”
Magero the Obstreperous shambled up and fell down plump on his nose in the full incline. His rear end pointed skyward. His nose rubbed in the spilled detritus upon the floor.
In the normal way, Delia much misliked this groveling. Now she pursed up her lips and let Magero grovel. She was in half a mind to leap on his back and give his rump a few cuts with the rapier, just to remind him.
Presently she said, “Jilian. Will you please lend me a golden talen. I promise to return it as soon as possible.”
Without question Jilian withdrew a gold coin from her belt purse and handed it across. Her white face brooded on the scene, interested and yet sadly detached. Delia caught her breath. This scene was over. Now Jilian hungered to find Kov Colun...
“Magero. Stand up!”
“Majestrix!” he blurted, and fumbled and stumbled, and stood up, and so could say nothing.
“Here is your gold coin.” She flipped it to him. “I shall do nothing. For in you I sense a poor st
rayed ponsho, who does not think but acts. This is your misfortune. I shall not kill you. But I think — remembering what you have done — it better for your health if you go far away. Probably out of Vallia. Go overseas and become a mercenary, and you may turn into a fine paktun, even a hyr-paktun. Perhaps, in a number of seasons, you might return to Vallia.”
“Quidang, majestrix!” and: “Thank you, majestrix!” and a slobbering gulp of air. Magero the Obstreperous might, Delia considered, make some attempt to think — next time.
As for Naghondo the Squint, he lay in the side doorway with a hole in his head. Delia refused to say the obvious — that made two — and turned back to what needed to be done.
The plot against Vallia had been broken.
Vomanus would recover and resume his lordship of the province. There were friends to be rewarded. There was a lot to be done. Jilian... Ah, well... The Sweet-Tooth would go her own way, by Vox, and all Delia could do was commend her friend to the good graces of the Invisible Twins made manifest in Opaz.
Jilian heard the whole plot, and made a grimace. She had been not only a tool of sorcery; but an unwitting accessory to crimes she could not commit. That, of course, had been the undoing of the witch.
“So Nyleen had it all planned out. With an ordinary empress and emperor it would have worked, I think.” Jilian slowly unstrapped her Claw to lay it aside in the balass box. “You have won for Vallia, Delia.”
For Vallia? Delia smiled. For Vallia also, of course...
She watched where the remains of Nyleen were being carried out “Think of the emperor. What he would have endured.” She spoke very firmly, most decisively. “Oh, no. I couldn’t possibly have let that dreadful woman marry my Dray.”
Notes
[1] bur. The Kregan hour, approximately 40 terrestrial minutes.
[2] Quidang! — Kregish for “Very good!” “Aye aye, sir!” “Your wish is my command and will be obeyed instantly.”
[3] Benga: saint.
About the author
Alan Burt Akers was a pen name of the prolific British author Kenneth Bulmer, who died in December 2005 aged eighty-four.
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