Within the structures, used only during these times, lay kitchens, bedrooms, dressing rooms, and all the facilities the overlords would need. The rear door opened and more sacrifices were thrust in at the points of swords. An overlord in mail gripped my arm. He jerked me back from the bars.
“This way, rast. And quietly.”
I followed him. We left the cage and, with six other guards, walked along the stone corridor. I understood then that someone who knew me had sent these men. Seven guards, overlords all, had been considered essential. Along the corridors guards and sacrifices moved, with personal slaves, pampered pets of the palace household, scurrying about their business. They would never be allowed into the great halls at this time.
The leem I had carried had managed to rake one of his clawed pads down my chest. The blood oozed. The seven guards were overlords of the second class. Their drooping moustaches were extravagantly long. They carried their swords naked in their hands. They had been told about me. We entered a high, narrow room, hung with brilliant tapestries depicting the hunt of Galliphron when he discovered the succulence of a vosk rasher grilled over an open fire. The guards went out; they backed away from me and the last I saw of them was the tips of their swords. The other door opened and the Princess Susheeng entered.
She looked pale, the spots of color burning in her cheeks. Her manner was frightened, wild, inflamed, jerky.
“Drak — Drak! I saw you-” She bit her lip, staring at me. I regarded her calmly. She held out a gray slave breechclout and a tunic embroidered with the black and green device of the overseer of the balass. Beneath her arm she carried the balass stick. She was still clad all in red, and her bosom heaved uncontrollably. Her eyes were large and hypnotic upon me.
“Why, Susheeng?” I asked.
“I could not see you die thus! I do not know — do not ask me. I cannot explain. Hurry, you calsany!”
I put on the gray slave clothes. I took the balass. I did not strike her with it.
“You must hide until Genodras returns-”
“It would be better, Susheeng, if I left now, would it not?”
“Ah, Drak! Cannot you stay, even now! Even after I have risked-”
“I thank you, Princess, for what you have done.” I looked at her. She was exceedingly beautiful, in her lush overblown way. “I think you have forgiven me for what happened in the Palace of the Emerald Eye.”
“No!” She flamed at me. “I have offered you everything! Yet you ridiculed me. Oh, how I rejoiced when those two cramphs betrayed you to my brother! How I thought I would glee in your death, in agony! But
— but-”
“Who?”
She shrugged those full shoulders, pouting. “It does not matter. Two cramphs of workers. They have been condemned now-”
“Who!”
My face must have worked its usual havoc. She shrank back. “Two overseers of the balass -
Pugnarses, I believe, and Genal-”
“No!” I said. I felt the hurt, the agony, there, that I had never felt when a sword bit, when a leem’s claws struck.
She saw that. Triumph spurred her on. “They betrayed you! Pugnarses, because the fool thought to wear the mail and sword of an overlord! And the other, because Pugnarses talked him into it, made him out of jealousy of a girl-”
“Holly!” I said.
“Yes,” she said, the venom biting. “A disgusting girl — cramph, Holly, who even now awaits my brother’s pleasure.”
“And the two — Pugnarses and Genal?” Again she moved those rounded shoulders, indifferent to their fates. She had always taken what she wanted; she still believed she could take me if she tried hard enough. “They are to be sacrifices. It is just. They presumed.”
“Just! Is that Magdaggian justice?”
“What do you, a Kov of Vallia, know of Magdaggian justice?”
I gripped her shoulder.
“I would like to find those two-”
“To kill them? To take your revenge?” She let me grasp her and swayed into me, clasping me in her arms. “Ah, no, Drak. No! Let them go. Escape. I have it all arranged. When Genodras returns and the world is green once again — then we can ride!”
“Where to? Sanurkazz?”
She shook her head against my chest. “No. I have wide estates. No one will question the Princess Susheeng. I will create a new identity for you, my Drak. We can return to Magdag. I have wealth enough for us both, and to spare-”
I had had, for the moment, enough of new identities.
She had been clever in not attempting to find a hauberk of width enough to encompass those shoulders of mine, and an overseer of the balass was nicely balanced to move about the megalithic complex without question within the hierarchical structure. I moved to the door. My face was set.
“Where are you — Drak! No! Please — NO! ”
“I thank you for your help, Susheeng. I do not blame you for what you are. That is not of your manufacture.” I opened the door. “If you wish to call the guards, that is your privilege.”
She ran to me, caught the gray slave tunic. Outside, a guard detail passed with a sacrifice screaming between them.
“Drak! I will come with you!”
We went out together. She preceded me, as was proper, and she led me through the maze of corridors, avoiding the halls from which floated the horrid sounds of the rituals. There was nothing I could do for those men of Zair now, here in a hive of mailed Magdaggian might. But my blood boiled and my heart thumped the quicker, and I had to hold myself very stiff and straight as we passed those men of Magdag. Genal and Pugnarses were chained together in a cell, awaiting their call to the sacrificial games. They looked miserable and woebegone and defeated. I was glad to notice they did not look frightened. They had had time to think, chained naked in a Magdag dungeon.
They saw me over the shoulder of the guard. Their eyes popped and they would have spoken out and so betrayed me once again had I not struck the guard on his chin, above the opened ventail. I took his keys and his sword.
I stood looking at them, as Susheeng hovered uncertainly at the door, peering with frightened eyes into the corridor. I shook the keys before them.
“Stylor-” Genal swallowed. He looked sick. “If you are going to kill us, do it now. I deserve it, for I betrayed you.”
Pugnarses, in turn, swallowed. He stared at the sword as a man stares at a snake. “Strike hard, Stylor.”
“You pair of fools!” I said. I spoke fiercely, hotly, angrily, feeling all the hurt in me. “You betrayed me because of Holly. Did you not see the pile of corpses — of our own men? The group leaders dead, the glorious revolution finished?”
“We-” croaked Genal.
“I persuaded Genal,” said Pugnarses. “I wanted to be an overlord! I thought they would believe two of us more than one alone. I must take the blame, Stylor-”
“And see what the men of Magdag do in return, how they repay your treachery!” My face, I could see, made them believe all was over for them. “I can understand either of you doing anything for love of a girl, and I suppose you thought she must choose one of you! Betraying a rival is a small thing to a man so obsessed with a girl. But you betrayed everyone and everything we worked and struggled for. You betrayed more than me, Stylor!”
I lifted the sword. Both of them stared at me, unflinching.
I reached across with the keys, threw down the sword, and snapped open the locks.
“Now,” I said. “Old vosk heads. We fight!”