Cormac signified that he understood and was ready, and they joined hands, and were gone. The moment they were there, on the outer balcony of the Temple of Danu, Cormac was speaking.
“Dithorba, time races and we catch it now or miss it forever. Fetch the queen here man, and instantly! Then it’s to the barracks ye must go, and-”
But Dithorba had winked out amid a little sound like the clap of hands.
A far louder one succeeded it; a resounding cry form many, many Danan throats. The Gael looked out on the strange city that was subterranean Moytura, and down on thronging thousands of the People of Danu. Their light-eyed faces were turned up at him, and many uplifted hands were pointing.
His knees in the partial crouch of a weapon-man’s readiness, he turned his head to his left. There, others stared at him; two. A handsome young man in a robe white as foam of the wave, with a large collar of silver on him, a carcanet from throat to mid-chest. It flashed with jewels. His robe was girt with a doubled cord of woven cloth-of-silver, and his fair hair was lustrous, clean and long-combed. At his side, bejeweled, in an ornately ornamented, and purfled robe of the same marmoreal white, on her pale locks a chaplet of silver and coral chased with gold, stood… Riora.
Nay. Not Riora. Some Thing called from an unnatural elsewhere by Tarmur Roag! A lamia, mayhap. And mayhap Dithorba was more than right, in giving me this new dagger!
Ready to act, he becautioned himself to look behind him; along the white-colonnaded balcony.
No wizard was there; doubtless Tarmur Roag thought it wise to remain out of sight of the people whilst his plans were put forward by Cairluh and… the simulacrum. Cormac instead saw three Danan weapon-men in fine armour polished to high sheen, and with bronze on their wrists rather than bracers of leather. As their eyes met Cormac’s, all three reached for their swordhilts.
So too did Cormac mac Art-and turned, and plunged toward her who was Riora’s exact likeness and him the Gael assumed was the queen’s plotting cousin, Cairluh.
“It is done, Cairluh!” mac Art said, biting out the words, and he drove his sword into the white-robed woman with such force that the point brast through her back and tented her garment before tearing through it.
Cairluh stared in horror; so too did the people below. It was the total and all of Cormac’s plan; that he come here with all swiftness and, pausing for naught, seek to slay the thing in Riora’s likeness.
A chorus of screams and roars of rage swelled up from the people gathered below, as their eyes reported the stabbing to death of their queen by a towering man with dark skin never got of Danan parentage.
They were still shrieking when she they thought their queen was transformed before their thrice-shocked gazes.
The skin of that lovely Riora-face became a liquid, melting and oozing, running. A frightful howling sound issued from her lips even as they changed. Then Cormac, Cairluh, three frozen weapon-men and thousands of duped Moyturans saw the queen become a ravening snarling demonic thing that was shaggy with red hair. The snowy robe fell from the metamorphosing body. Red too were the tufts of hair on the fox-like ears, though black was the hideous snarling animal’s face and the taloned claw-hands of the creature.
The crown of Moytura clattered to the floor of the balcony.
Dithorba was right, Cormac thought, and he transferred his swordhilt to his shield-hand. Iron and steel will not slay a demon, a lamia.
Far from dead the thing was, and as it pounced, Cormac drew the dagger Dithorba had foresightedly given him and in the same motion plunged it into the heart of the monster. A single curving claw sought to tear open his arm; it left instead a deep groove in his bracer of good cow’s hide.
With another snarl that lofted into a shriek, the thing gouted blood around the silver dagger. Staggering sidewise, it struck the parapet that ran around the Crescent Balcony, and fell over.
Below, the people cried out anew, and not this time in rage. Citizens nigh trampled one the other in their efforts to hie themselves well back from the tumbling monster. It struck the green-and-white stones of the Square of the Moon with a loud and sickening thump and a great plosion of blood.
Then all who could see stared, as the slain demon-thing that had worn the likeness of their queen melted again-into a shiny putrescence that gave off the stench of a thousand dead fish.
Aye, Cormac thought, silver slays the demonic!
No cries rose now from the populace. There were only murmurs. Again many eyes rose to the balcony. A new silence fell, followed by more excited muttering and isolated shouts; at the side of the demon-slaying stranger had appeared two well recognized figures: Dithorba Loingsech and the Queen of Moytura.
Below, the last trace of the demon vanished.
Stooping, Dithorba picked up the Coral Crown of Moytura, and placed it on the head of his queen.
Yet no cheering bedlam arose; the people were too shocked and confused to react so. Had not they seen their queen afore; had not they seen that she had been a foul slavering thing? Now-was this their Riora? And the giant at her side with un-Danan skin… what or who was he, and from whence? Was not that the Sign of the Moonbow on his chest? The queen was lifting her arms to them…
The silence deepened. Into it Riora called, “I am Riora, Queen of the Moyturans, Chosen of Danu. And this my champion, Moytura’s champion, Danu’s champion-Cormac mac Art!” And in a natural tone she said, “Your voice is stronger, Cormac-tell them.
He did. The Gael bellowed out a few sentences, speaking slowly, pronouncing carefully and knowing that to them he spoke with a frightful strange accent. It was the content of his words that held import: he identified her at his side as the real queen, and accused Cairluh and Tarmur Roag of having done treachery on her.
No proof was necessary. Cairluh provided it. He turned and fled, holding high the skirt of his regal robe to facilitate the churning of his surprisingly muscular legs.
Again Riora lifted high her hands to her people; a queen crowned and in a soiled blue gown. And this time the cheers rose. After a moment of smiling on them, she turned to the three weapon-men who’d been coming at Cormac and who now stood frozen, as horrified again and again as those in the square below.
“In your hands I see swords,” she said, “and on you I see the clothing of the Queen’s Guards. I am that queen. Sheathe your weapons!”
The trio did. One fell to his knees; his companions swiftly emulated him.
“Basest treachery was done on me,” the queen said. “And you were tricked-you thought that… creature was I?”
All three kneeling men assured her that they had; from the anguished eyes of one tears rolled.
“Then into the temple, Queen’s Guardsmen, and take Tarmur Roag, traitor to all Moytura-traitor to Danu! “
The three guardsmen rose, bowed, and drew their iron swords. Cormac’s hand hovered at his hilt while he watched those men in crescent-shaped helmets for any hint of movement toward Riora. There was none; their pained expressions remained. One man spoke.
“Lady Queen… below are the Lord Cairluh, and Tarmur Roag, the filays and seanachies and other guardsmen. There were a score of us for the… the ceremony; seventeen are in the temple.”
“All dupes, as you were?” Cormac asked.
The men’s expressions showed that they did not know. Some of the men below with the usurpers might well have been tricked into believing the lamia was the queen. Yet some were almost certainly knowing tools of the plotters, loyal to Cairluh and Tarmur Roag because of threats or promises or both.
Cormac strode past Riora to the head of the stairway leading down into the temple.
The Temple of Danu of Moytura was laid out in the shape of a crescent; a moonbow. Nor was it huge, as the Gael had already surmised from the balcony’s length. The arms of the crescent flowed out away from him on either side. The roof was supported by four colonnades that marched along the arms of the crescent; columns of pale stone blocks banded around by bronze. Within the innermost lines of columns, between them and the outer walls, hung deeply purple drapes or curtains, trimmed in silver. He assumed a sort of gallery or passageway lay behind, betwixt hangings and walls.