A figure ran below, and after it, into the square, a group of fourteen or fifteen of the Queen’s guard. There came then an abrupt cessation of all movement, each man poised like an actor in a tableau, scoured by the raw light of the flares.
Raldnor stared up at the sentries on the walk. He drew in his breath, hard, and prepared to speak with every shred of his authority. It was to be his throw of the dice against death, but he saw only her in his mind’s eye.
The air parted with a hiss behind him, and he felt something thud against his back. He thought they had flung a stone at him, but there was no pain. He turned half around to face them—it had been part of his earliest training never to turn his blind side to an enemy, and he had forgotten it. In that moment he found he could no longer see. It took him suddenly, too swiftly to make him afraid. His hearing went next and after that, everything. The last conscious thought left him in the void was a woman’s name, shining like a red jewel, but he could no longer recollect to whom it belonged. A moment later there was nothing.
The guard who had driven his knife into Raldnor’s back moved to one side to allow him to fall on to the square. He grinned at the watchers above and bent to wipe his blade on the fallen man’s cloak.
“Do you have the authority to kill?” one of the sentries called.
The guard finished wiping his knife and pointed to Val Mala’s blazon.
“That’s my authority.”
The sentry turned and bellowed back at the gate, and into the courtyard beyond. Almost at once an alarm bell began to toll.
“You can tell the Dragon Kren all about your authority when he comes.”
The guard spat out: “What’s to keep us here?”
But the gates had rolled wide, and a phalanx of Garrison soldiery moved out, fully armed, even to their shields. A man was quickly sent for Kren.
The Dragon Lord followed his officers out into the walk and showed neither displeasure nor irony at being summoned to this brawl. With his steady and appraising eyes he took in the scene and said at last, quite evenly: “Who is this man?”
“Ours,” the guard snarled, “by order of the Queen. Cause us no further trouble, Dragon Lord.”
“No one has answered my question,” Kren said with the utmost politeness, his eyes like polished steel. “I asked you who the man was.”
“The Sarite who calls himself Raldnor. King Amrek’s Commander.”
“And his offense?”
“That, Dragon, is the Queen’s business.”
Kren bent over the man named Raldnor and turned him gently. He had been swimming in the river, this one, and he looked near death. Kren lifted the lid of one eye, then took the limp wrist. He noted with a curious sense of imminence that the man’s smallest left finger was missing. He had heard mention of Amrek’s favorite but not paid a great deal of attention to what was said. There was a look of Rehdon in the face. And Val Mala’s rats were hunting him, were they? Kren had no great love for the Queen’s intrigues, and this piece of Koramvis, after all, lay within his personal jurisdiction. He traced the faintest flicker of pulse bedded in the Sarite’s wrist, but he was losing blood fast.
Kren straightened.
“You’ve done your lady’s work admirably,” he said shortly. “This man’s dead.”
A barely detectable signal drew the phalanx in close about himself and Raldnor. Two Garrison soldiers lifted Raldnor on a shield and carried him quickly in under the gate.
“You’ve no right—” the Queen’s guard cried out.
“I would remind you, gentlemen, that you’re within the limits of the River Garrison. I have every right. But if you’d care to wait on our physician, he’ll no doubt confirm the news I’ve given you.”
They had no choice but to do as he told them.
His hospitality was faultless. He had wine brought for them as they paced, cursing, about the hall. Eventually an old man in a stained robe came nervously in. He glanced at Kren, then murmured: “Quite dead. The blade pierced the lung.”
The guard’s response was immediate.
“There’d be blood on his mouth if the lung took it. Do you think I’ve never seen a man die? You don’t know your trade, Aarl take you!”
An unexpected severity possessed the physician. Lying at Kren’s direction had disconcerted him, but this layman’s lecture drew his temper.
“My trade? I know yours—to damage what the gods made; mine is to patch up what I can after your blasphemies. You butchered your victim, and if you know the method a man employs to live by after his heart’s stopped, I’d be happy to learn it. As to Aarl, he knows more of that place than either of us.”
13
Amrek turned a jeweled collar in his hands. A beautiful thing, a fitting gift. Yet would it please her at all? She seemed never to notice what she wore. He nodded to the goldsmith and his assistant, his eyes fixed on the gems flashing in the lamp shine. He was troubled and constrained. He had seen her at the feast, at his side, and she seemed to him as remote as ever—and yet, strangely different. He could not be sure of the change, only sensed it. In the anteroom he had embraced her and found on her the hint of a most curious new physical mood, like a scent without substance. Though he had not inspired it; it was neither because of, nor meant for him. He felt he had lost anything he might have achieved with her before. Damn Thaddra. He had craved for this woman every night alone in the mountains. Where must he begin again?
The slightest of sounds came from the open doorway. Amrek glanced up and saw Val Mala standing there.
“My lady mother. An unexpected pleasure.”
“Send these men away,” she said. “What I have to say to you is not for their ears.”
He set down the collar and stood up.
“What’s the matter, madam? Has Kathaos disappointed you tonight?”
She said nothing, but there was a kind of blankness on her face, a mask she held badly; behind it he saw an impossible triumph. He stared at her, and a premonition laid its clammy fingers on his skin. He waved the two men out, and they scurried, bowing, away. He barely noticed.
“Well, madam? What’s your news?”
“My son,” she said, “what I have to tell you concerns your bride.”
He felt the dark roaring of a sea engulf him.
“What’s happened to her? What have you done?”
“A good deal has happened to her, and I’ve done nothing but discover it.”
The hate that boiled up in him disfigured her and made her very ugly. He seized her shoulder. It seemed incredible to him that once he had been curled up inside her, at her mercy—and, now he was free of her, able if he wished to choke the life out of her, still he was mewling and helpless.
“No more games, madam. Tell me what you came here to say.”
Then he saw the smile; she could not keep it back.
“Your Dragon Lord, Raldnor the Sarite, has been teaching your bride bed manners.”
He let her go as if her flesh had burned him.
“Don’t lie to me,” he got out, knowing quite well that even she would never dare lie to him on such a matter, and tasting suddenly, once more, that new, unnamed, scentless perfume on Astaris’s flesh.
Val Mala composed her face and held up the mask again as she told him everything.
While she spoke, his eyes never left her mouth. He seemed to watch the words that came out of it as if watching rats emerging from some stinking crevasse underground. By the time she had finished, his face had become quite fixed and quite empty, like the painted face of an idiot in a carnival.