by Gary Gygax
"What's that you said? My father, my king, harmed? If this is so, heads will roll!"
The guardsmen blinked and pulled back, but their officer had to relate the news. "I fear it is very bad, Your Highness—Lord Justiciar. Lord
Tallesian has sent us here to bring you instantly to the council chamber, for he thinks that King Glydel has been struck dead!"
Faces set in grimmest looks, both prince and magus went off with all haste after the two soldiers and their leader. Now was the time of conclusions. They must complete the charade before celebrating their complete success!
— 16 —
ROYAL JUSTICE
Six guards came to attention outside the fatal chamber. The subaltern from the private audience chamber was there, commanding the security force. "Your Royal Highness!" he cried, snapping to a salute before Prince Llewyn.
The atheling merely waved the man aside, walking on with even strides. Two soldiers jerked open the doors with unseeming haste, for if they didn't their crown prince, soon king, would have walked into them. "What has happened?" Llewyn demanded with a shout. There were guards everywhere, and a knot of people were clustered by the table where he had sat as Setne Inhetep but a few minutes before. Not ten minutes before, he thought with secret malign pride. It was all going just as he had anticipated and planned.
The archdruid was kneeling by a still form. "It is your father, Prince," Lord Tallesian cried. "I am doing my best to—"
"See that you succeed!" Llewyn rejoined with a hard voice, a voice filled with concern, anger, and regal tone. "You there, Captain! Who did this?"
Sir Murdough was standing with four other guardsmen atop a tangle that had been the arras. Behind the five men Llewyn could see the splintered door, but the library itself was obscured from sight. "A foreigner, Your Royal Highness," the captain said without blinking an eye. "The Egyptian who was known as Magister Setne Inhetep." The prince came closer. "Was, you say?" Murdough nodded curtly. "Aye, Lord Prince. Was. We cut the assassin down. Here. See these blades still red with the foul blood of the man who dared to strike the king of Lyonnesse!"
Very good, almost as if he were not acting. Prince Llewyn turned to the chief cleric once again, forming his face into an agonized expression. "Tallesian—how bad is my father's wound?"
"It is . . . I ... The stroke went to King Glydel's heart, Highness. Worse, the blade which pierced it was laden with poison."
"Magick, then! Use your powers to command heka, Archdruid, and mend the flesh, make harmless the toxin. He must live!"
"Of course, Prince Llewyn, of course. I do all in my power, but I fear that the Egyptian used some foreign dweomer to make triply sure of his foul deed."
"What do you mean?"
"None of my healings, negations, purifyings, or restorative castings have yet worked, though I have now laid nearly six upon my Sovereign's poor body."
Hiding his inner joy, Llewyn hung his head and squeezed a pair of tears from his eyes. It was a trick he had used as a child, and that he could still produce such moisture by dint of will stood him in good stead now. Lifting his face so that all could see the streaks, Llewyn called to Myffed: "Come, Behon, follow me. I would see the corpse of the vile /Egyptian. I want you to ply your art to see if it cannot be forced to reveal the secret of the magick it used to lay low the king—my dear sire." The Ovate almost scuttled in his anxiety to comply and appear befuddled. Perhaps Myffed was near hysteria. Llewyn repressed an urge to slap the old man into sensibility, then turned and started toward the library. He was almost inside the room and could see the splatters of gore when a voice called.
"My Royal Prince!" It was Lord Tallesian. He looked worried, and his eyes shifted slightly as they contacted those of the prince. "I beg you to come here with me and attend your royal sire a moment."
What was the fool doing? This wasn't according to their careful plan at all. Something had gone wrong! Impossible. The stupid druid had forgotten something or blundered somehow. He would have to see what the idiot needed. "Come along with me, then, Behon."
"No, dear Prince. This is a matter which only you can be privy to," Lord Tallesian cried, raising one hand as if to fend off the advancing high justice of the kingdom, and looking at Prince Llewyn with a warning message in his eyes.
The archdruid held up Llewyn's father's head with his other hand. The atheling stared. King Glydel's skin was pale and suffused with a bluish tinge bespeaking the poison which had doubly smitten him down to his well-deserved grave. This was impossible, this idiotic behavior from the bungling druid. How could he have ever placed so much trust in Tallesian? The dolt was about to do something absolutely incriminating. He'd have to intervene, do anything the fool asked now. "I understand, Venerable Archdruid," he responded as calmly as he could. The tremor in his voice would surely be taken for that of grief and dismay. He looked at Myffed. The magus was standing frozen and wild-eyed, for he too realized that Tallesian might unravel and somehow destroy their whole scheme. Llewyn couldn't leave him standing there in the middle of the room, alone and exposed. "Lord Justiciar, please go before me into the library and carry out what magickal inquisitions you can upon the murderer's dead body. I will join you in due time."
"Thank you, Prince Llewyn," the Behon breathed with an explosiveness indicating how much tension had built up within his chest waiting for the prince to show him some escape.
-Llewyn watched the Ovate enter the library, then turned and took five paces so as to stand beside the kneeling cleric. "What is this, Lord Tallesian?" He spoke calmly enough, but there was a dangerous undertone directed squarely at the druid. Llewyn hoped the sound would put some mettle into the fool.
"Please, Prince, I must needs ask you kneel here beside me for a moment."
"Are you ... ?" Llewyn allowed the rest to go unsaid. Kneeling as requested, he then spoke again. "Are you telling me the worst?" Those words should serve well. They would strengthen Tallesian and supply to the others that which they would assume was the remainder of the question he had swallowed.
It was as if he could see himself from a distance, as if he were an actor on a brightly illuminated stage. He had been perfect when following the scripted parts of this deadly drama. Here, now, with naught but extemporaneous speech and improvised roles, Llewyn was rising to even greater heights.
He took his father's still, ghastly head in his gentle hands. "Move aside, Lord Archdruid, so that I may cradle the poor cheeks with mine own hands as you tell me your rede." Tears now streamed down Prince Llewyn's cheeks, as he seated himself upon the floor and pressed his dead father's head against his thigh. He shuddered, but a sob made it seem as if the motion was but the wracking of his body from grief. Llewyn looked at Glydel's chest, the place where he had sunk deep the steely blade. Bright red blood oozed from the wound!
"The corpse doth bleed again!" Tallesian hissed in the prince's ear. "Your presence will unmask our crime, for all here know that should the murderer touch the corpse of his victim, the wounds will again gush gore!"
"Quiet, fool!" Llewyn hissed back. "It is you who will betray us—you alone! The corpse of Glydel bleeds only because I have lifted it and stuff from inside now drains out. What is the matter with you? Say those words which we have rehearsed—or make up what you must— but be calm. We have gotten cleanly away with the deed, save that you must now play out your last little part."
The greatest ecclesiastic of the realm gaped at Llewyn. There was a strange look about him, but the words from the prince seemed to steady Tallesian somewhat. "Then you are prepared for me to say the final bit?" Llewyn nodded. "So I must tell you that news which is the worst you might hear, Prince Royal?"
"Yes, fool, yes! What is the matter with you?" the prince hissed in a vehement whisper. Then aloud, so that those nearby could hear: "I appreciate your prayers and advice, Archdruid, but what of my father?"
"Look upon his face, Prince Llewyn," Lord Tallesian said in tone equally clear and ringing. "Look." He paused, forcing the prince
to turn slowly so as to play out the scene fully. Then, as Llewyn turned to stare at the dead face, Tallesian went on: "King Glydel is . . . ALIVE AND WELL!"
Delusion. A nightmare from which he would awaken in a moment, finding himself in the king's bedchamber, and the time some hours after the day of the fell murder he had done. Alive? Well? Never could that be, nor could those words have come from the druid's lips. Llewyn turned to gaze at the dead face of his father. Glydel's eyes opened in an unbearable gaze of coldness and death. "NOOOOO!" He shrieked in hysteria, leaping to his feet, heedless of what happened to the blue-hued corpse and with no thought to those who stood watching. "You are DEAD!" the prince shouted accusingly, pointing at the corpse which now sat upright, eyes still fixed upon the one who had assassinated him. "I thrust the knife into your filthy breast with my own hand, thrust through that heart which never cared for me! Such poison went into that wound, Father-whom I-Hate, that a dozen bulls and more would be slain thus. 1 killed you and you are deadl"
"I live," the blue lips said flatly, and King Glydel arose.
"Myffed! To me! You must use your magick to slay—slay all here who would undo us!" Llewyn screamed, then turned to face the druid. "Tallesian! You will suffer death for your part in this. Don't stand there like a post—strike with your own heka or you are lost as I will be!"
The chief druid of the realm stood unmoving, gazing with the same look in his eyes as had Prince Llewyn's father. It was a mixture of contempt, revulsion, and disgust. Tallesian had the hard and unpitying look of an executioner. "It is time you knew, Llewyn. Lord Tallesian lies bound in the dungeons beneath this fortress."
"You are gone over the edge! Crazed! You are Tallesian!"
"No more than you were Inhetep," the man rejoined. "You see, dear prince, I am Magister Setne Inhetep, the man you impersonated." "BEHONNN!"
The young subaltern's head appeared from behind the ruined arras. "I must report to you, Prince Llewyn, that the Lord Behon, Myffed, has been slain resisting arrest but a minute ago. He is beyond your voice's command now, sir."
Llewyn stumbled back a step, collapsing weakly into one of the padded chairs in the chamber. "I am hallucinating," the prince muttered. "None of this is happening .. ."
"But it is," his father's voice came to him.
Cold, laden with impending doom, the words were like cold water to him.
"Your flesh—blue and dead . . ."
His father spoke again. "Woad and some creams used by ladies to beautify themselves. Magister Inhetep's own assistant, Lady Rachelle did the work. "You are testimony to her skill—murderer, traitor, and coward!"
Llewyn attempted to stand. Perhaps he could make a dash for it, escape in the warren of hidden passages. His legs were too weak to hold him. The prince looked at Tallesian, still doubtful. Where the archdruid had stood the tall Egyptian was now standing. He had not lied. "How?" It was all the prince could stammer.
"Ere I came to you and your two cohorts, prince, I had sussed out your plottings and knew all. I went so far as to alert the rulers of Cymru, Hybernia, and even high Caledonia."
"Why do that?" Llewyn asked, for it seemed to have no bearing on matters.
"Those worthy kings understood. Their agents went immediately to your own father, alerting King Glydel of the treachery and villainy."
"I am ashamed to say that I called those good and noble emissaries foul names and believed them not. Not until Magister Inhetep showed me proof positive. Then we prepared this bit of play-acting to counter your own charade. Do you know that I went through all this because I thought you incapable of patricide? To the last
I expected you to flinch, confess, beg forgiveness. Had you done so, I would have spared your life and sent you into exile with all the comforts any man could want for the rest of your life."
"All I could want? Never! I want all Lyonnesse! I will rule all Avillonia!"
"No." That simple, flat denial from the wiz-ard-priest was a blow across the face to the prince.
Llewyn stared at his accusers, his tormentors. "Proof, you say? What proof was there for Inhetep to display which would convince a loving father of his son's deceit?"
"Golden coins, Llewyn. Magister Inhetep brought me a pair of griananas which he had gained in one of the supposed temples of Set."
"That's no proof!"
"He asked me then to examine my treasury, to see if one thousand of the same golden coins weren't missing, the theft carefully hidden by false bookkeeping."
The king paused, wiped at his drawn face with a hand. "To prove him false I did as he asked, investigated, and proved him right instead. You were tried and condemned then for theft, treason, and worse. Yet I would have forgiven . . ."
Llewyn spat. "Be damned with your miserable forgiveness! I'd take none of it. All I've ever wanted from you was your life and crown."
Glydel turned away from the raving prince.
"You will soon enough have no head to wear the noble mark of kingship," Inhetep said. He was not gloating, nor was he baiting a fallen foe. The Egyptian simply found this parent-slayer so hateful that he had to speak out.
"Damn you, too, dirt-skinned dog!" Llewyn shrieked. "How did you keep my blade from striking down the filthy tyrant?"
"It was simple enough," Setne told the man. "A talisman can take almost any form, and I prepared one especially for your father. You saw it, I'm sure. It was a sheet of parchment which made him proof from injury by blade, and even death from the most virulent toxin conveyed thereby."
"You could never have guessed I would strike with a poisoned knife as I did!" Llewyn denied.
"You think knife or dagger unusual tools for a regicide? They are old, Caesar himself was struck down thus. I had no guesswork to do, however, prince. The servant sent by Lord Tallesian to fetch the venom was easy enough to get the truth from."
"The fool druid was to get the stuff himself!"
"Perhaps. He ignored your orders for once, though, Llewyn. I suspected some poison would be employed in slaying the king, so agents went round to all those dealing in such substances. One admitted selling a special venom to a man in the employ of Lord Tallesian. Magick can be used for many purposes, and I used much to garner the form of your deed. Sir Murdough recalls it not, for he was under a geas, but he revealed most of it."
The pale face of Prince Llewyn was a mask of hatred. "That fool soldier knew not half!"
"You forget I am a cleric as well as a mage," the Egyptian told Llewyn. "I used the former to overpower the mind of your chief druid, and the latter to spin such dweomers as to find the whole web you had set out. Then and there we might have brought you to heel, but your father loved you too much, thought you would repent before striking, just as he said. Thus, we all had to act out our parts in this pretend murder. Thanks to the power of the talisman I wrought so carefully for him, you would not have succeeded had you plied a greatsword laden with the poisons from a score of death adders."
"But you were dropped into the prison pit! The fall, the paralyzing gas, the drugs which the druid used . . ."
Inhetep shook his head. "I expected the fall, and as Rachelle and I plummeted, a charm secreted on my person was invoked, and the lady and I fell to the hard stones with hardly a bump. As for the gas, your father's stout retainers had already cleared away the numbing stuff, replacing it with harmless vapors of similar color so had you looked you would have noted nothing amiss. When the druid applied his mind-blanking herbs to the two of us, he did so without knowing that he saw but phantoms. As Tallesian suspected no dweomers, he sought for none and understandably failed to notice the illusion cast to make the whole seem real. We watched, as did your own father, as the archdruid performed his vile duties."
"So there was never a chance?"
"That is so," Inhetep answered.
"No," King Glydel corrected the wizard-priest, "there was a chance." He looked at his son, and his eyes were misted. "You could have done other than you did."
Llewyn hung his head, saying
nothing more. Inhetep had to tell the defeated man the final portion. "I took Tallesian's place after he thought he had administered his drugs to Rachelle and me. The king gave me permission to do so only then. The form that you thought was me was a construct I fashioned with magickal energy, mine own heka, using naught alive or ever living, save blood from a slaughtered pig, so that when the automaton was hacked by the guards it would appear to die properly in a welter of ruddy gore. There you have it all, Prince."
"All. Yes, I will have it all! Somehow I'll escape and get revenge on you all! I'll get aid— yes, that's it! I can call for aid from the north!"
"Silence!" Inhetep shouted the command, and the prince obeyed. He could not do otherwise, for Setne had laden his word with magickal power, which silenced the man. Turning to King
Glydel, Inhetep said, "You must not allow your son to speak as he was about to, for who can say what might occur if he did so."
"I understand, Egyptian wizard-priest," the monarch replied coldly. His anguish was turning against all now. "Guards! Chain this criminal, for before you all I disown him as my son, deny his royal blood. He is a common criminal, and you will treat him as such."
"Majesty ..." Setne prompted. "He must not speak!"
"Gag the criminal," the king said in a grating voice. "Put him in a special cell below, one reserved for confinement of those capable of using dweomers—just as is the case of our former chief druid, Tallesian."
The soldiers hastened to obey. Llewyn was dragged out, and then the bodies of the Behon and Sir Murdough followed. King Glydel stared at the procession a moment, then looked at Inhetep. "I should thank you, Magister, for your work, for saving my life, but I cannot find it in my heart at this time. Goodbye," he said, and without anything further, the ruler of Lyonnesse left the chamber.
