delicate gilding of arms and backrest could not disguise the power of that throne. Many brightly hued rugs bestrewed the throne and the dais. There golden-chained Chail Sheom simpered in attendance. Giant Womoxes waved faerling fans on each side of her. She looked — and I’ll give her her due -
mighty impressive.
“So, Bagor ti Hemlad. You are nothing better than a common thief.”
She no longer wore all black. Her body was smothered in silver tissue, with a gold-tissue vest. Her jewels scintillated with a sparkle from the ranked lights so that she appeared a glittering statue — and, yet, no statue, for now the blood burned in her cheeks, and those slanting green eyes leeched fiercely upon me, a corner of the rich red lips caught up between white pointed teeth.
“You do not answer! Speak, onker.”
I was staring past the massively muscled man in the half-armor of gilded steel and the brilliantly feathered helmet, who stood by her left side, leaning on an arm of the throne and fingering his rapier, and I stared and stared at the familiar, horrible forms that crouched at her feet. Poor silly fat Queen Fahia of Hyrklana had attained a kind of surrogate dignity with her pet neemus, those vicious and treacherous black-furred cats. This woman, who had called herself the Kovneva Serea of Piraju, had gone at a bound far past fat Queen Fahia.
I looked at the jiklos.
I knew them, these manhounds. I had been chased by them through the jungles of Faol, had faced them with a wooden stave, had seen them rip shrieking victims to pieces. Apims, are the manhounds of Faol, apims trained to run on all fours and with their jagged teeth seize upon their prey. This woman of the blazing green eyes kept jiklos as her throne-step pets!
To give the woman her due she gave me time to answer. Not so the man in half-armor. He left off fingering his rapier. He bounded down the dais steps, his face congested, roaring at me.
“No stinking cramph of a slave insults the Majestrix while King Doghamrei stands ready to defend her honor!”
Just before he reached me with every intention of knocking me headlong, I said, quickly and icily, “So King Doghamrei would soil his lily-white hands on a slave?” and then I sidestepped, clanging my chains, and tripped him and trod on him as he fell.
Bedlam!
The guards yelled and dragged me off and this buffoon King Doghamrei shrieked as I put a foot into his ribs and the Queen — for obviously this icy woman who had traveled incognito as the Kovneva Serea was Queen Thyllis of the Empire of Hamal — gave curt orders that in surprising time sorted out the rumpus.
I was dragged up and then flung down before her.
Doghamrei — the king of one of the kingdoms within the Empire of Hamal — was being sick and hustled away by his slaves. Oh, yes, that had been quite refreshing. Quite like old times. I thought the Queen would now release me, seeing that I had saved her life, finding a regal pretext to overturn the law and the sentence, and then I could get on with finding out what this mysterious cayferm was that went into the paol-boxes.
Of course — Dray Prescot, as ever, was as stupid as an onker, a get-onker!
Speaking in a low level voice that flayed like one of my clansmen’s skinning knives, she told me that her routine perusal of the criminal lists had revealed the name of Bagor. My personal effects, taken from me and docketed, revealed the violet-and-gold-zhantil brooch. She had had me brought here to inspect me. Here she took her green eyes away from my face, which must have been looking diabolical. When she continued I detected a quiver in her voice. “Only chance brought you to me in the first instance. Chance saw to it that I was apprised of your imprisonment. You, Bagor, whom I dignified with the cry of Jikai, are a common criminal.”
“For three damned scales?” I shouted.
One of the guards — they were a fresh lot, clad in mesh and probably of the same pastang that had been on duty at the little white folly — came up and hit me. I wasn’t watching him, staring at the Queen. He staggered me. I turned and swung a loop of my chains at his legs. It is an old trick. He toppled with a surprised yell and I put my knee in his nose as he went down.
“I do not like rasts striking me, Queen, when I am not looking!” I bellowed up at her. She did not flinch.
Her amusement made her courtiers and her guards nervous.
“I am told you are a wild leem, Bagor. If you go on like this you will surely be beaten-” She mentioned one or three of the names for the unpleasant ways they have in Hamal of beating people — all under the law, of course.
If I say that I couldn’t take all this seriously, I believe you will understand my frame of mind. There I had been, poised on the threshold of true discovery of the secrets of the fliers. I had the composition of the vaol-boxes in my head. The paol-boxes would have yielded their secret to me when I challenged Ornol again. And then I had been arrested as a thief for taking those three scales. The pouched belt of dirt had been ditched as soon as I regained consciousness, but the scales damned me. I was weighed in them and found guilty, so to speak. And, even after all that, I could have won free from the chain gang on the walls. Once back in the sacred quarter I was safe as Hamun, Amak of Paline Valley. And now this Jezebel of a queen was playing with me, having fun, dressing me up in humiliating clothing, taunting me with her lazy power.
“What do you want of me, Queen?” I bellowed. “I have a sentence to complete of three seasons. Let me get back to the walls and smash granite for the defense of the city!”
She put her pointed chin on her fist and stared down at me, over the heads of her vile jiklos, her green slanting eyes appraising me. “You are ceasing to amuse me, Bagor.”
Before I could get out the exact words with which to annoy her, a Pallan approached swiftly from the rear side of the throne, picking his way apprehensively past the manhounds — as well he might, for they lolled their tongues at him, and saliva dribbled down their hideously human jaws. He whispered in Queen Thyllis’ ear for a few moments, and a look of cruel satisfaction slowly gathered on her face, flushing the chiseled whiteness, lending a more venomous cast so that one saw her character in an entirely new and altogether more hideous aspect. Truly, she had been merely playing with me!
The Pallan blew his golden whistle and guards — more of the link-mesh-clad men — dragged in a wretch who stumbled, falling, to be dragged so that his body fairly bounced across the rich carpets. The courtiers — a brilliant lot to whom I had given scant attention — buzzed with muted excitement.
“Stand the nulsh up so we may see the face of evil!”
The man was lifted and banged down on his torn and bleeding feet. He was dressed in the brown of a gul, much patched. He stood near me, his face puffy from blows he had not dodged, one eye closed; blood streaked over his scalp from his tangled hair.
“This is the man, Majestrix!” squeaked the Pallan. He sniffled in his eagerness. “He has been put to the question and he has confessed all. The indictment is written fair-”
“Spare the laws of Hamal in my own palace!” rapped Queen Thyllis. She looked at this poor devil and I could only liken her look to that of a voryasen in the pool of the Phokaym. “Nulsh! You have been convicted of spying for Pandahem. You would betray my armies to your own foul lords!”
The man lifted his head. He glared up, shaking in his chains, filthy, bloody, finished.
“I work for Menaham!” he croaked. “Long live Menaham, beloved of Pandrite!”
I had no love for The Bloody Menaham, but this man deserved well in the thoughts of a fighting-man. Someone in the pressing crowd of courtiers, sycophants all, began a chanting and the rest took it up and soon that high hall rang with the words.
“Syatra! Syatra! Syatra!”
Instantly, I understood, and I knew the purpose of that cleared area in the hall, where ornate gilded railings — only they were solid gold, as I afterward discovered — kept folk away from a circular slab of marble. The noise beat against the gilded rafters, echoed in the groined vaultings, smothered all reason.
“Syatra! Syatra! Syatra!”
An old Xaffer, one of that strange remote race of diffs, trundled across to the railings. Under his directions steel-clad guards removed a section of railing and then the circular slab of marble lifted and swung aside on rollers. A round opening in the roof suddenly cleared, allowing the twin suns’ rays to spear down like spotlights. They were not quite centered over the hole in the floor. The shouting stopped, and a hush of breathless expectancy hung in that vast and evil hall. The spy from The Bloody Menaham shrieked as he saw what snaked, white and sucking and seeking, up through the hole.
