DragonThrone02 The Empire of the Stars

by Alison Baird

  The crowd streamed up and broke around him, like a wave. Hands seized hold of him. But their touch was not rough, nor were their voices angry. They were hoisting him into the air, onto their shoulders. And then he saw a familiar face in the midst of the throng.

  “Well done, oh, well done, son of Jemosa!” Kiran Jariss was yelling. “Your fame will live forever after this day! I never saw such bravery!”

  Seeing the smiles on the faces, hearing the laughter on the air, Jomar’s wearied senses at last grasped the truth. The people had been on his side, all along! Their thunderous anger had been directed not at him, but at his captors. Now that he was free to listen, he heard through the clamor the words “Zayim” and “Jomar” being chanted in a booming chorus.

  “We would have come to your aid before, but we were afraid of the beast.” Kiran shoved his way through the crowd toward the exhausted Jomar as his bearers let him down again. “The people are angry about what was done to you—and to General Gemala, too. The army is divided: over half the soldiers have rebelled. Many are refusing to shoot at the crowds rioting outside Yanuvan; some even loosed arrows at their own comrades in arms who obeyed the order.”

  “I don’t believe it,” mumbled Jomar. Was it was really happening—had these people turned at last on their ruler? With a supreme effort he pulled himself together. “Help that man over there,” he called. “The one the monster wounded. He’s still alive, I think. Find someone to get the manacles off the bound ones too: they’re Nemerei and we’ll need their help!”

  “You are hurt, too,” observed Kiran, pointing.

  Jomar looked at his bleeding arm. “A flesh wound. Give me something to bind it with, like a piece of your sash, and I’ll be all right. We have to get to Yanuvan—I want to talk to these rebel soldiers, and I need a sword! Khalazar has more of my men in prison, and my two friends. Do you know what happened to Lorelyn, Kiran?”

  Kiran’s face turned grim. “She was sent into the harem wing to be a slave for the royal wives. And your friend Damion has been sent to the temple, for sacrifice.”

  “What!” Jomar paused in the act of tying a strip of cloth around his forearm.

  “That is in part why the people are so angry—they fear the return of the old ways. Damion is to die at sunset. Jomar”—Kiran was now running to keep up with the long strides of the Zayim—“Lorelyn may be in greater danger. The crowds were already beating at the doors of Yanuvan when I left. If they break in, Khalazar will have to flee through one of his escape tunnels, and leave his harem behind!”

  “So?” Jomar neither broke stride nor glanced at the man following at his heels.

  “The guards will have to follow custom, to preserve the king’s honor. All in the harem wing will be slain—including the slaves.”

  Jomar made no answer. His fatigue and wound were forgotten: shouldering aside the people in front of him, he began to run.

  “WHAT IS ALL THAT NOISE?” asked Lorelyn, moving to the harem windows. She was clad in the thin brown robe of a slave, a thrall collar about her neck. Concubines and royal wives, bright as birds in their colorful gowns, looked up at her.

  “It’s like voices—hundreds and hundreds of voices,” she said. “I can’t see anything through these stupid curtains. How do you open them?”

  One of the royal wives joined her at the window. “The curtains are always secured, so that only light may come through. We cannot be seen at the windows! We would be punished for immodesty.”

  Without another word Lorelyn reached up and wrenched away the thin white fabric, letting in the unmuted light and exposing a view of Yanuvan’s battlements and the paved outer ward far below. The Zimbouran women blinked and protested, shielding their eyes as if the soft light of early evening dazzled them.

  A pasty-faced boy of ten or so, who was lounging on a nearby divan, sat up and scowled at Lorelyn. “Get away from there, slave!” he called. “You will be beaten for that! And you, Arah”—to the woman standing next to Lorelyn—“you have shown yourself at the window, where one of the guardsmen might see you. A royal wife! You must be punished as well.”

  “Will you let him talk to you like that?” said Lorelyn in amazement as the woman recoiled with a cry.

  “Silence!” the boy said. “She must do as I say. Get away from the window now!”

  “Yes, my son.” She moved to obey.

  Lorelyn stared. “He is your son? You’re not afraid of your own child!”

  “He is the crown prince, Jari. With his brothers dead, he is second only to Khalazar.”

  Lorelyn snorted. “Nonsense! You ought to be ashamed, a grown woman like you, letting a mere child boss you about.”

  The dark-rimmed eyes dropped before her gaze. “It is the law. Men rule, no matter their age. If a man dies his son becomes head of the house, even if he is still a child.”

  “Well, it’s a stupid law. It’s high time it was changed.” A commotion in the ward below caught Lorelyn’s attention and she turned back to the window. “It looks like the army and the palace guard!” she exclaimed. “They’re fighting each other down there! But why?”

  Princess Marjana joined her at the window, and pointed. “Look there!” Hundreds of unarmed, ragged figures were running through the ward, following on the heels of the army.

  Lorelyn gave a whoop of triumph. “The people! The people have risen up! Of course—the army’s grown tired of shooting their countrymen. They’ve revolted—they’ve breached the fortress, and they’re coming after Khalazar!”

  The women began to wail and keen. Lorelyn turned to them. “Don’t be afraid! You’ll not be blamed for Khalazar’s wrongdoing. You will be set free, I am sure, to go back to your homes. This is the best thing that could happen to you!”

  “No,” one royal wife said tearfully. “You do not understand. We cannot survive this. You will see.”

  “Whatever do you mean?” Lorelyn asked. But the woman only wept, and many of the others began to weep as well.

  The face of the chief eunuch was gray as ash. “The palace guard have their orders, for such times as this,” Yehosi quavered, but he too would say no more.

  As they watched the battles below, the door at the end of the chamber suddenly burst open. Two fully armed palace guards entered. One’s sword was drawn; the other carried a huge flagon, which he set down on a table.

  “It is over. You must perform your final duties,” the first guard said.

  “The king is dead?” cried a wife.

  “No, he lives yet; but he must flee the palace and Jari must go with him. But we cannot take all of you as well. You must die, rather than dishonor him by becoming spoil for other men. The slaves too must die,” he added, looking at Marjana and Lorelyn, and Yehosi standing behind them. “All within the harem walls must take poison. Be brave, and die honorably for your king, serving him to the last.”

  “Why is your sword drawn?” Lorelyn asked him boldly, eyeing the weapon.

  “If any one of you refuses, she shall be slain. It is the law.”

  The women wailed again and clung to each other sobbing. Some of the eunuchs wept too. If only they had the courage to charge the guards, Lorelyn thought in frustration—they vastly outnumbered them. But these were not free men and women, they were timid creatures bred for docility. As well try to set a herd of sheep on a pair of wolves!

  Lorelyn set her jaw. “I’ll be the first, then.” She pushed her way past all the others and went straight to the table. The second man was filling a goblet with a dull-brown liquid from the jug.

  “Wives, then concubines,” he snapped. “Slaves go last.”

  “What does it matter?” she challenged.

  “Let her do it,” the guard with the sword advised. “This one must die, by sword or poison, lest her companions free her. It is Khalazar’s command.”

  “Very well,” said Lorelyn. “I’ll drink the poison. Let me take my own life at least, and not die on a coward’s sword.” She took the cup from the table, raising it to he
r lips.

  Then with a sudden flick of her wrist, she dashed the contents in the second guard’s face.

  He screamed, clawing at his face as though terrified that the poison might somehow seep through his skin. Blinded by his own frantic efforts, he stumbled backward, and Lorelyn seized his sword-hilt, yanking the weapon from his belt. The other guard, recovering from his own stupefaction, raised his sword—too late. Lorelyn’s blade had already plunged in under his arm. He crumpled to the floor.

  “Take his sword,” she yelled at Marjana while the Zimbouran women screamed and milled about, looking more like frightened sheep than ever. The surviving guard was curled up in a corner, moaning with fear and clutching his face. Marjana looked at Lorelyn in disbelief.

  “What are you doing?”

  “We’ve got to get out of here,” Lorelyn urged. “I must help the rebels. Here, help me into his clothes and armor”—indicating the slain guard—“and take his sword for yourself!”

  “I can’t,” said Marjana, shrinking. “I have never wielded any kind of blade. It’s no use, Lady Lorelyn—I’m not as strong as you, nor as brave!”

  “You must be,” insisted Lorelyn, struggling into the armor. “You’re the Queen of Shurkana. You must be brave for your country’s sake, Your Majesty.”

  Marjana stared at her. Throughout her captivity it had never once occurred to her that the deaths of her father and brothers made her the heir to the throne. Shurkana was fallen: how, then, could the Lotus Throne have an heir? But now Khalazar had been toppled from his own throne. At last she understood. She was free—and all Shurkana with her.

  Queen. With shaking hands Marjana took up the fallen scimitar. It was a well-balanced weapon, not so heavy as it looked, and to her surprise she hefted it with ease.

  “Good,” approved Lorelyn, putting on the helmet. “Oh, do stop the noise”—this to the gibbering guard—“If the poison were going to kill you, you’d be dead by now. And after all your talk of dying honorably, too!” Lorelyn snatched up the flagon and, smashing the windowpane with her sword-hilt, flung it together with its contents into the court below.

  “Now, Your Majesty!” she cried, running to the door.

  Lorelyn and Marjana rushed out into the hall, heading for the great central staircase. Noises came from the ward outside: men cursing and the clash of steel on steel.

  KHALAZAR STORMED ONTO THE battlements. A roaring, ravening crowd had converged upon the central keep, and the palace guard had stationed several battalions in a protective circle around it. Khalazar clenched his fists, staring with bloodshot eyes at the rebels below. From this height they looked to him like insects, minute scurrying forms he could crush with his foot. Would that it were so!

  Again and again he had ordered the army to fire the cannons and shoot arrows into that hateful mob. They had obeyed, wreaking death and injury—and still the mob grew, like some noisome monster sprouting many heads for each one cut off. And with every attack on the people, dissent grew within the army. Attacking Moharas and Shurkas was one thing; firing on their own fellow citizens was another. Some of the conscripts had been born in these very streets, had wives, friends, family living here. Many were now in open revolt. Someone had cut General Gemala’s body down from the gibbet on which it had hung: they had removed it for burial, no doubt. It was a flagrant violation of his royal command.

  He gnashed his teeth. Mandrake had not answered his summons for aid, either. “I will punish him for this disobedience!” he snarled. “When next he comes, I will be waiting for him with cold iron to bind him as I bound his goblin servants!”

  Gemala had warned him before dying: “That Mandrake is no spirit,” he had insisted. “A magician of terrible powers, but mortal all the same. He bled, Majesty: you saw it! When did a spirit ever bleed? He has deceived you from the first.”

  “Gemala spoke true,” fumed Khalazar. “Mandrake gulled me. Well, I will make him bleed again, wizard though he be! I will hang him from the gibbet in Gemala’s place!”

  He ran down from the battlements. Seizing a sword out of the hands of a terrified guard, he ran on down the wide main staircase of the keep.

  Suddenly two figures raced across the hall below: a woman in brown slave’s garb, and a palace guardsman. “Here are the main doors,” called the slave whom he recognized as Princess Marjana, “we need only unbar them, and the people can come in.”

  He glared at the guard in fury. Here was yet another traitor—within his very household! And the guard had given the slave woman a sword! At that his anger wholly possessed him: he charged down the stairs like a mad bull, brandishing his own blade.

  “Treacherous filth!” he howled. “Aid my enemies, would you?” He ignored Marjana, flinging himself on the armored guard in a frenzy of hate. The guard’s sword came up and Khalazar’s blade glanced harmlessly off it. Raining blow after blow on the guard’s weapon, the king sought to strike it from his grip and slay him. But then there was a stabbing pain in his shoulder and he cried out, turning. Marjana stood there, her own sword held out in shaking hands. Its tip was bloodied.

  “No!” the guard shouted. “Leave him to me—”

  The young man’s voice was familiar—but the king was too furious to ponder further. Khalazar struck Marjana’s weapon from her unskilled hands and raised his blade again to behead her. But the guard’s sword sliced into his arm before he could strike. He turned, striking back, clumsy with pain, but throwing his whole massive weight behind each blow. The guard gave way. And then, even as he raised his blade high for another mighty downstroke, there was an agonizing jab in his left side. He looked down, staring blank-eyed at the sword-tip protruding from his upper chest.

  He turned himself slowly about, and saw her—Marjana: she had taken up the sword again, and run him through. But no. It was not possible. A woman could not do such a thing . . .

  He sagged to his knees, his sword clattering to the floor. He, who had commanded countless legions, could not now exact obedience from his own limbs. They betrayed him, failed to respond. He collapsed onto his side. And there, flowing away across the floor: his own blood—deserting his body in long red runnels. His strength was fading, his sight dimming. He was no god, but only a man—a man with not much life left in him. A man dying by a woman’s hand—not even the hand of the Tryna Lia, but the hand of a lowly slave.

  It could not be. Khalazar-Valdur could not die—not this way. A groan arose deep in his throat, the sound of a stricken animal. Or of a man, a mortal man who was not and never had been a god . . . He felt himself falling into lightless deeps, beyond healing or hope. Not Khalazar-Valdur, only Khalazar who must die as other men. At least let him die by a man’s hand, and not a woman’s! Why did the traitorous guard not strike, curse him, now that his master lay helpless before him? Khalazar’s life was ebbing fast, but there was still a chance to be slain honorably—by a male hand. He stared up at the guard in impotent entreaty. Kill me! Kill me now! If I die of the woman’s wound I die in dishonor. Let me die by yours . . . The man, he saw, was removing his helmet—

  At the sight of the face beneath, Khalazar gaped in horror and despair. Then a long shriek of utter defeat burst from his lips.

  THE MAIN DOORS BUCKLED and burst wide open, and a torrent of rioters poured in. The beleaguered palace guard had broken and fled at the overwhelming onslaught. People trampled those who did not flee fast enough, and seized tapestries, gold fixtures, vases, whooping and yelling as they pillaged.

  One of the men looked up as Lorelyn hastened through the hall. It was Jomar! She ran to him with a cry, and he grinned at her. “What a day! Isn’t this amazing? The mob freed me! But where is Khalazar?”

  “Over there,” Lorelyn waved her hand at the bloodied corpse on the stone floor of the hall. “He’s dead, Jo.”

  “You’re sure?” Jomar prodded the corpse hopefully with his sword, but it did not stir. “A pity,” he grunted. “I would have liked that pleasure myself. Oh, well, at least one of us got him.”


  “It wasn’t I,” said Lorelyn. “Marjana struck the death blow.”

  The Shurka woman still clutched the bloodstained sword. “It is over,” she said in a quiet voice, throwing it down. “My father and brothers are avenged.”

  Jomar turned back to Lorelyn. “Are you all right? Did he hurt you?” he asked, laying a hand on her arm.

  She shook her head. “Jo, are the other warriors with you? We must set a guard on the harem. The women are terrified, and I think the children are in danger from the mobs. Some of them are little monsters, Jari especially, but they can’t help being Khalazar’s children, and they don’t deserve to be killed for it.”

  Still holding her arm, Jomar began to run, pulling her along with him. “The Arainians are here with me. I’ll send them to guard the women and children. And Marjana too. Go back to the harem, Majesty, and wait there!” he shouted over his shoulder. The young queen, who had been following them, stopped short. “Please. You’ll be safe there, I promise. Lorelyn, come with me!”

  “Where are we going?” she panted as they ran.

  “The temple of Valdur. Damion was sent there—to die at sunset.”

  Lorelyn gasped. “Then we must hurry, Jo,” she cried. “The sun is setting now!”

  DAMION WAS ONLY DIMLY aware of the hard stone of the altar on which the priest and acolyte had laid him. The latter, at his master’s command, had gone back to the door and opened it a crack to watch the sun’s progress down the sky. The priest now held in one withered hand the ancient ceremonial dagger, with its bronze blade and hilt of human bone. But Damion spared no thought for these things. He lay still and closed his eyes, entranced by the procession of images playing out in his mind. Against the darkness of his eyelids they grew clear once more. His procession through the crowded streets—the oasis refuge—the battle in the desert; all rushed by, like a tide reversing its flow. And then he was back in Arainia again, at Halmirion, and Ailia was looking up at him from under her crown of flowers.