In a corner was a large table laden with cold meats and white bread another thing he had not seen in Alb and bronze and pewter vessels containing beer and wine. Blade ate, but was careful not to drink. He was going to need all his wits about him.
He covertly examined the wall hangings, of pale leather richly worked with golden thread, mostly in cabals that he did not understand. There was one large and central hanging depicting a unicorn and, as he watched in seeming unconcern, he saw the flicker of an eye. The watcher! He had no doubt it was Queen Beata.
Blade, his mouth full, and with a joint of meat in his right hand, bowed extravagantly to the unicorn. "I thank you for the food, good queen. It is excellent and I am hungry. Might I request that some be sent to my man now languishing in your dungeon?"
The eye glittered. Then came a muffled laugh, and a voice as husky and deep as many a man's.
"I have heard true of you, Blade. An upstart rogue of great impudence. Neither did Alwyth lie about your face and figure both are as fair as she wrote. Tell me, Blade, are you the man you look to be? For I warn you fairly, your life depends on it."
There was a chill beneath the huskiness that sent the prickles up his spine again. He did not know the manner of it, but grasped the substance he was on trial again.
With another bow he answered, "If I am a rogue, your Majesty, at least I am a modest one. As to being a man I lay claim to that also. How much a man I cannot say until I know the hazards I face."
Again the muffled laugh. "You mince words like a Dru! I do not like that. But in other aspects you please me and you shall have a chance to prove yourself. I shall put you to the sweetest ordeal of all, Blade, and if you win I may be persuaded to spare your life."
He did not bow again. Hands on hips, he stared straight at the unicorn. "And that of my man, Queen? And the Princess Taleen shall go free to her father?"
Silence. Then, in a voice as cold as the mist enshrouding the battlements: "You try too far, Blade! A little impudence is like salt, I relish it, but you dare to bargain with me? So soon as though you had rights here!"
He had begun with boldness and with boldness he must continue. He stared at the flickering eye and answered in a voice as cold as her own. "I only ask, my queen. A man is no man who does not seek to aid his friends."
"Enough! You will be prepared for my coming. I advise you to spend some of that time in learning how to leash your tongue."
The eye vanished.
There was a rippling of leather as a door opened behind another wall hanging and four maidens came into the room. They wore only gauzy pants, cut full and falling to the knee, and secured by a single amber button. Their hair was cut short, in mannish style, and each lacked a left breast. Where the breast had been each carried a saucer-shaped red scar. The sanguinary badge of Beata's service. Blade marveled that the men and women would serve such a cruel mistress, and for an instant his memory flickered into life and he could remember another place, another world, in which such things were not tolerated. And yet that world, as much as he could recall of it, had been bad enough. Then the mists closed in again and memory vanished.
The maidens were all young and fair, discounting the mammary scars, and they went about their tasks with efficiency and absolute silence. They did not look directly at Blade, nor converse among themselves. He guessed at the reason for this and, while the others stared in stricken horror, he gently seized a shapely blonde girl and pried her mouth open. Her tongue had been cut out.
They filled a large bronze tub with foamy warm water and bathed him. He was dried on towels of fine linen, perfumed with chypre and dressed in saffron-dyed linen breeches and a long tunic. He was given soft leather sandals that laced to his knees. His beard was combed out and his thick dark hair combed into place.
When they had finished he was allowed to see the results in a bronze mirror and could not repress a grimace of disgust at the finery he was wearing. Yet this was Queen Beata's game and he must play by her rules. By this time he had a shrewd idea of what the game would be, and he was determined to best her at it. In his past life he had been a sensual man, highly sexed, and hardly let a day pass without gratification. Now he was more than ready. He had had enough of blood and iron for the nonce, and of vixens like Lady Alwyth and malicious kittens like Taleen.
The maidens left and Blade strode the chambers alone, a hard smile on his face. He would give this cruel queen a bit more than she bargained for, and so might ensure his future. He knew, better than most men, what women are born knowing, that sex is a weapon.
There was movement behind the unicorn wall hanging. Blade, at his ease on one of the couches, regarded the hanging with equanimity. Let the bitch come. He was more than ready for her.
The hanging parted in the center and Queen Beata stepped forth. She wore a simple black robe that clung to her supple figure. The robe was girdled with a scarlet cord and though it was opaque it concealed nothing, clinging like oil to her breasts and buttocks and thighs. Her face was long and deathly pale, with a scarlet slash of mouth and a high arching nose, and her upswept hair, dark and tinged with silver, was so intricately coifed that Blade guessed at once that it was a wig.
There had been a dozen large candles in the room before; the maidens, on leaving, had taken all but one. In this tiny spear of unwavering light she approached him.
Blade stood up and bowed slightly, with a touch of insolence. Instinct told him that servility was not the ploy.
"Your Majesty, you are beautiful."
It was, in a certain sense, the truth. She was not young even in the dim candlelight he saw the finespun wrinkles around her mouth and the throat creases, and what the wig concealed he did not know yet she had beauty. Or the relic of beauty. He was in no position, or mood, to make fine distinctions.
For a moment she regarded him without speaking. The almond shaped eyes, as shiny black as lacquer, glinted through narrowed lids that had been painted blue. She examined every inch of him before she spoke.
"You will approach me, Blade, on your knees. It is the custom here all who seek my favor must tender to me that homage. Do so now."
It occurred to Blade that he was not so much seeking her favors, as having them thrust on him, yet he complied. He slid off the couch and to his knees, with what grace he could muster, and sidled toward her.
Queen Beata's robe fell open. Blade, glancing up, saw that the body, if not the face, was young. Her breasts were firm pale goblets, her belly flat and unwrinkled, her hips trimly flowed into legs that were slim as any girl's. Her body scent was cloying, thick with woman smell and chypre.
"Good," Beata said, her voice cold and mocking, yet excited. He wondered which pleased her the most to kill a man and hang him on hooks, or to have him sexually. Both? "You have made homage and so will live a little time. I will confess that I am glad of it, for you are a man such as I have never seen before this night. Come now, Blade, to the couch, and prove me that you are a man and not a phantom, not a tunic and breeches stuffed with muscles that are useless to a woman."
At the couch she bade him lie just so. She adjusted his brawny limbed body to her exact liking. Then she disrobed him, lingering over each part of his nakedness with her lips and fingers. She was still wearing the black robe and when he reached for one of her breasts she slapped his hand aside.
"I decide, Blade, when it is time for that! You will obey. That is all I require of you. That you obey and be instantly ready when I have need of you."
Blade, who at the moment was very much instantly ready, still thought it a tall order. Every man has his limitations. The situation might have been amusing, take away the grim reality. His life, and that of Sylvo, and possibly the Princess Taleen, hung on his ability to perform for the lady. He had an instant of panic during which he feared that the tension, the pressure of the moment, might in itself cause him to fail. He fought off the idea. It would be irony indeed to die of that.