Queen Of Demons

by David Drake

  “If he wants to see me, why doesn't he—” Ilna began. She remembered the reception hall's stepped entrance; and realized a number of things at the same time.

  “Ah,” she said. “No, Master Cerix isn't a beggar. In fact, you owe your life to him, sir.”

  Ilna started for the entrance. Over her shoulder she added, “Which you may think is more valuable than I do!”

  That wasn't fair, though perhaps the attendant would be a little slower to assume that a cripple was a beggar. Besides, even when she was in a better mood Ilna had never set much store by fairness.

  Cerix was in his chair at the edge of the pavement before the reception hall. The porticoes around it were crowded by hawkers and spectators getting out of the bright sun. Without someone to protect him, the crippled wizard would be repeatedly kicked and buffeted by people who weren't paying attention—which meant most people, in Ilna’s experience.

  “Thank you, mistress,” Cerix said. “I—”

  A man with coarsely woven scarves draped over his arm stepped between them. The fabric had been painted—of all things!—with what was supposed to be a picture of Prince Garric.

  “Here you go, mistress!” the man said in a voice better suited to shouting across the crowded plaza. “The true likeness of the savior of Valles!”

  Ilna’s face went rigid. Without speaking, she took three short cords from her sleeve and began knotting them.

  “Or perhaps you'd like the Lady Liane, the savior's—” the hawker said. Ilna drew the cords tight in front of him.

  “Let's go somewhere with fewer people in it,” she said to Cerix. Guards stepped aside as she wheeled the wizard's chair from the public area of the palace into the gardens reserved for residents of the compound. Behind them the hawker stood with glazed eyes, methodically picking his wares into a pile of oakum.

  Ilna turned into a semicircular grotto where water fountained from the urns of bronze nymphs. The tendrils of weeping willows formed a screen for those sitting on the stone benches—or in the present case, sitting and squatting respectively, beside the stone benches.

  “I wanted to say good-bye to you, mistress,” Cerix said. He looked drawn, but his clothing didn't smell of the drug he'd used in the past. “There's no reason for me to stay here, so I'm going back to the Garden. Halphemos will be waiting there and, well...”

  He patted his stumps with a wry smile.

  Ilna didn't speak for a moment. “Ah,” she said at last “I can see why you'd want to do that, Master Cerix, but...”

  She grimaced. “I'm scarcely the person to tell others how to live their lives, am I?” she said. “Is there anything I can do for you before you...?”

  “No, no,” Cerix said. “Though if you'd tell the others for me I'd appreciate it. I'd tell them myself, but they're busy.”

  He smiled. “And besides, they wouldn't understand.”

  Ilna nodded. “I've learned to expect that about most people and most things,” she said. She stood. “Can I at least move you somewhere?”

  Cerix looked around. “No, this will do very well,” he said. “It's particularly fitting, in fact.”

  “Yes, I can see it might be,” Ilna said. “In that case, I'll leave you to your business. Remember me to Halphemos, if, you would. Though I suppose he'll have more than enough to occupy him in what he'll think is paradise.”

  “Halphemos won't have forgotten you, mistress,” the wizard said. “Nor will I.”

  Ilna brushed through the willow fronds. There was soft plop behind her. She turned. Cerix's wheeled chair remained in the grotto, but the only thing on it was a peach blossom of remarkable size.

  She stared at the bloom for a moment, then picked it up and tucked the twig behind her ear. She smiled. What would the people in Barca's Hamlet think?

  An attendant was leading Baron Robilard toward her. “Ah, mistress!” he called. “The procession is about to set out for the temple of the Lady of the Boundaries. We've been invited to join Prince Garric at the high altar. May I escort you?”

  “I'll go there with you, but I think I'll watch with the crowd, Baron,” Ilna said. She gave him her arm. “I have a great deal of experience at looking down on other people. I like myself better when I'm looking up at them instead.”

  When Cashel realized that Tenoctris hadn't heard him coming up the path, he tapped one of the wooden pillars. Half a dozen towhees flashed their russet sides as they flew into the bushes.

  “What?” said Tenoctris, looking up from the game board. She'd been concentrating so completely that she hadn't seen Cashel standing directly across from her. “Oh, Cashel. Is everything all right?”

  Tenoctris had chosen to live in a storage building at one end of a long open shelter used for outdoor parties. A table under the shelter now held the game set she and Cashel had found when they'd returned to the queen's mansion the day before.

  “Garric is going to give thanks at the temple just down the road,” Cashel said. “I know you don't...”

  He turned his head. He liked Tenoctris a lot, so he didn't want to say anything that he'd been raised to think was an insult.

  “You don't talk much about the Gods,” Cashel mumbled. “But I thought maybe you'd like to come. I know Garric would like you there.”

  Tenoctris got up from her stool and winced. “I've been sitting too long, that's clear,” she said.

  A ceramic mug and a wide-mouthed jar sat on the table beside her. After draining the mug, Tenoctris dipped a second draft and emptied it almost as greedily.

  “I should at least remember to drink when I'm working,” she said as she set the mug down.

  Her face sobered. She walked around the table to put her hand on Cashel's. “I've seen various powers, Cashel,” she said. “I've never seen the Gods. But neither have I ever believed that because I don't see something, it doesn't exist.”

  “Well, I'm not a priest,” Cashel said, still looking at the ground.

  “We have a great deal to be thankful for, and I'd regret not showing my appreciation to any power which had helped,” the old wizard said decisively. “I'll get ready at once.”

  Tenoctris grinned. “That is, if I can find my maid. I chose the woman because she doesn't seem disturbed by my work.”

  She nodded to the game board. Cashel had carried it with great care from the queen's mansion, but the pieces showed no inclination to slide on the slick tourmaline surface. He wondered if they'd have fallen off even if he'd turned the board upside down.

  “That seems to be the woman's only virtue, however,” Tenoctris went on. “Fortunately I don't put many demands on her.”

  Birds scratched and chattered on the shelter's roof. Reconstruction plans hadn't gotten to this part of the compound yet. That was another of the reasons Tenoctris had picked it to live in.

  Cashel was more comfortable here too. Flowers were all well and good; he liked them. But it didn't seem right to grow flowers on a scale larger than any barley field in the borough.

  Tenoctris was still staring at the game board. It had caught her again when she glanced in its direction.

  “The queen used the board for prediction,” Tenoctris said. “I've tried to count the number of pieces, but I can't. The alignments seem to change every time I blink or look away. Several hundred, certainly.”

  Her index finger dipped toward a counter with a bubbled surface. It had melted onto the square where it rested. “I wonder if the queen realized that she too was a pawn?”

  Cashel shrugged. The board had appeared in the queen's private quarters at some time after he and Tenoctris first explored the mansion. Somebody could have evaded the handful of guards to slip the object into the empty room, but Cashel couldn't imagine why anyone would have wanted to do that.

  “I think we ought to get moving, Tenoctris,” Cashel said apologetically. He should, at least. He wanted to listen to people shout the praises of Garric and Sharina, his friends.

  “Yes, of course,” Tenoctris said. She pinched a bit
of her sleeve and looked at it critically. “Perhaps just a dress tunic over this one rather than a complete ensem—”

  She stopped speaking and locked her attention back on the board. Cashel had seen it too, in the corner of his eye: not movement, because none of the counters had moved, but change.

  Cashel had a good eye for physical relationships. He'd often scanned a woodline or a pasture full of sheep, noticing at once if something wasn't in the place where he expected to find it.

  “That piece wasn't there before,” he said, extending his finger to point.

  “Don't touch it, Cashel!” Tenoctris said.

  “No ma'am,” he replied. “I wasn't going to.”

  The counter was a bead of black glass, maybe obsidian. It seemed to shimmer. Cashel cocked his head to look at it from the side. At one angle, the smooth surface flared into dazzling iridescence.

  Cashel stepped back, putting both hands on his quarterstaff. “What's it mean, Tenoctris?” he asked.

  “I don't know,” she said. “This board is a work of great power, but I'm not sure that it's really as informative as the queen probably thought it was. Certainly it didn't help her very much in the end.”

  The grin she gave Cashel looked a little forced. “Come, help me rummage through the clothespresses that Liane has kindly showered me with and see if we can find something suitable to wear.”

  She stepped briskly toward her living quarters. Cashel glanced again at the wickedly gleaming counter. He shrugged, smiled, and followed Tenoctris.

  The drums at the head of the procession beat a tattoo, setting the pace for the company of the royal army marching directly behind the band. At every tenth step the trumpets blared as well. The sound never failed to startle Garric but his mount, a big roan gelding, merely flicked its ears at the brassy din.

  “A proper warhorse you've got here, lad,”whispered King Carus. “We'll have other use for him shortly, if I'm any judge.”

  Gripping a horse with blistered legs was savagely uncomfortable. He tried not to wince at each measured step.

  “King Garric!” cried the crowd lining both sides of the street and looking down from the roofs of buildings on the route. “Long live King Garric!”

  The highest officials of the government walked before him. The former conspirators, now the chiefs of the Prince's Council, wore their court robes. As a mark of respect they were on foot rather than mounted or in litters.

  Garric's friends walked with them. Tenoctris had a robe of splendid silk brocade. She seemed cheerfully able to keep the slow pace, but Cashel was on one side of her and Sharina on the other. They'd make sure Tenoctris was all right, though Garric hated to see her walking.

  “It isn't right for any of them to have to walk!” he muttered.

  Carus' memories of other processions in a score of other cities cascaded through his mind. Twice Garric recognized a building: a ruin from the Carcosa of his day, and a block of Valles where the present structures rose from the massive foundations of the Old Kingdom.

  The cheering crowds were interchangeable. “King Garric! Long live King Garric!”

  “It's part of your duty,”whispered King Carus. His visage, a shadow in his descendant's mind, was grim in a way that it never was during battle and slashing danger. “Do it for the same reason you sleep in the rain and listen to arguments in inheritance cases that are so complicated your friend Ilna couldn’t find the truth in them. Do it because it's your duty.”

  Attaper shouted an order. The detachment of Blood Eagles marching at the end of the procession clashed their spears against their shield bosses and bellowed, “Hail Garric! Hail Garric!”

  “But never,” the ancient king added in a tone as harsh as an eagle's scream, “let yourself start to like it!”

  Epilogue

  The storm had passed, but the gray sea still churned and a stiff breeze lifted streamers of froth. Gulls riding the waves had their heads tucked tight against their breasts.

  A wizard stood in the air, rising and falling with the surge but never touched by the water. He chanted with his arms extended before him. At each syllable, purple lightning crackled from the fingers of one hand to the other.

  The sea beneath the wizard humped as though with a slow swell. Instead of settling again, it continued to rise. Gulls lifted in squawking terror, their wings beating heavily for altitude.

  An ammonite the size of a small island rose to the surface, its scores of tentacles spreading before it in a vast carpet. From most angles the coiled shell was black, but the touch of the setting sun licked an unearthly radiance from the wet nacre.

  The wizard stood on the back of the monster he had called to him. He raised his head, and the heavens echoed with his laughter.