And, with shock, realised he had fought his way to an open arched window so huge it took up half of one wall. The crowd in the throne room convulsed. Sean Sarazin was forced right out of the window. 'Gaaa!' he screamed. Clutching. Grasping!
Screaming, he clung to someone's collar and someone else's ponytail, a death-drop beneath his feet.
'Sarazin!' yelled Glambrax in his wart-ugly voice. To me! To your left! Look left, look left!'
Sarazin risked a quick glance to his left. Glambrax was clinging to the stonework on the outside of the throne room. Easy enough to do, for the throne room's exterior walls were lavishly sculptured with dragons and such.
'Come on!' said Glambrax. 'What are you waiting for?'
But he had no need to shout, for Sarazin was already moving. Hand over hand he went, clutching to people who were in turn clutching others to save themselves from the death-drop. He gained the stonework, seized the head of a platypus, found a boot-hold on a sculptured skull, then bawled: 'Out on the roof, you morons!'
Screams answered him. Screams of a terror entirely different from anything he had heard yet. Anguished sounds of lacerated horror – as if knives were at throats already. A moment later, people were fighting to escape to the roof. Some made it. Others slipped, fell. Wailing, they plummeted down, down, down To smash, to break, to fracture, to wreck their lives on the awaiting stoneslab doom far below. Broken teeth, splintered jawbones, smashed eggshell skulls…
Some of those who made it to the exterior began to climb down immediately, descending hand over hand by way of stone-carved unicorns, gryphons, taniwhas, eels, onions, mermaids, seashells and the occasional basilisk and hippogriff and so forth.
But Sean Sarazin climbed instead to the very summit of the exterior of the kingmaker's throne room, determined to make his last stand there. Glambrax followed. 'Glambrax,' said Sarazin, 'get me a sword.' But Glambrax grinned, giggled, then shook his head.
'Very well,' said Sarazin, 'when my enemies come I must perforce defend myself with a dwarf. A dead dwarf, if a live one proves too unwieldy.'
Oh, that's a famous weapon, master, a famous weapon!' said Glambrax.
Then he chortled, making a hideous sound half like laughter and half like somebody swallowing blood.
Sarazin, nested in surprising comfort between the uprearing stone dragons which crowned the throne room, closed his eyes and tried to relax. He would need his strength for the battle to come. However.. . that battle proved a long time coming.
Finally, Sarazin realised that he was almost alone on the roof. Most of those who had joined the exodus from the throne room had climbed down, or else had gone back inside. He could still hear sounds of panic but they were faint, distant. Looking down – a long way downl – he saw concerned figures clustered around the corpses of the stone-smashed fallen.
'We'd best be going inside,' said Glambrax, starting the descent.
Sarazin watched him go then, puzzled, followed. On regaining the throne room he found it almost empty. A small boy child was sitting on Farfalla's throne, suck- ing his thumb. A couple of wounded soldiers sat slumped against a wall. And there were half a dozen servants and such. And Snakes, some dead, some wounded and writhing. Scor- pions, some mashed, others holding their ground in fury. Centipedes. Toads. Huge, filthy cockroaches. And what was that in the centre of the room? Dung? No! A heap of bubbling mud!
As Sarazin watched, out from the mud there plopped first a toad, then an adder, then an asp. They were the last of the legions of the Dreaded Ones which had indeed come to his aid, albeit tardily.
A little later, Sarazin discovered that tens of thousands of verminous creatures, most poisonous, still commanded the stairwell. And, in the end, he too had to descend to ground level by climbing down the exterior walls, with Glambrax giving him unwanted advice for every choice of handhold.
Sean Sarazin had two questions which needed urgent answers.
First: why had Selzirk's mob tried for his blood? Second: did his mother still live? 'Glambrax!' said Sarazin, 'find me Farfalla!' But the dwarf, who had been trotting at his heels but a moment before, had vanished himself.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Drangsturm: flame trench guarded by Confederation of Wizards. Lies 500 leagues south of Selzirk. Runs length of narrow isthmus between Inner Waters (to the east) and Central Ocean (to the west). Divides Argan North from terror-lands of the Deep South where lurk the monsters of the Swarms.
Sean Sarazin had failed.
He had pursued his ambition relentlessly, had won his princess and his kingdom, and then had lost both. He had only been saved from deadly peril by a legal technicality. How humiliating! Could he still succeed?
Could he still be a hero triumphant, a conqueror, a leader of men, a ruler, a king? Could he – to come right down to specifics – regain the throne of Chenameg which Tarkal had stolen from him? Perhaps.
If he quested to the terror-lands, found the tectonic lever and threw it then he would be a hero true. With such heroic status, a few mercenaries and a good public relations expert surely he could seize and retain the throne of Chenameg.
The beauty of the plan was that the Harvest Plains would be unable to interfere with such an ambition, for if he threw the tectonic lever then Selzirk's lands would be drowned by the Central Ocean. But how would he find the lever? He had never formally researched the subject but, nevertheless, was aware that precious little was known of the geography of the terror-lands south of Drangsturm.
Besides, the more he thought about it, the more the notion of throwing the tectonic lever seemed absurd. A criminal madness, even. To sink Argan? To drown the Harvest Plains? To kill people by the million? Impossible to justify! He had been taught by Lord Regan that ambition was good: good for the individual, good for the world. But there were exceptions to every rule.
Yet he had sworn himself already to the quest. At his wedding with Amantha he had taken an oath to go questing for the tectonic lever. He had no choice!
'Stop talking nonsense,' said Thodric Jarl, when Sarazin spoke to him about it. 'You did not swear to find the tectonic lever, or to throw it. Your vow was to go on the traditional quest undertaken by all heirs of Chenameg.' 'But that is-'
'Is to quest until wounded, and no further. Surely you got a couple of scratches or such between arrest in Shin and safety here.'
Sarazin thought Jarl would have made a good lawyer, but dared not venture an insult so unpardonable. Instead, he said:
You call this safety? The mob has stormed the palace once. Why not twice?'
'Mobs cannot be roused to anger on a daily basis,' said Jarl.
Yet the mob attacked once,' said Sarazin, 'so surely hates me fiercely.' 'The mob hates Farfalla more than you,' said Jarl. 'Farfalla?' said Sarazin, puzzled. 'But why?'
'Because she perverted justice for her family's benefit,' said Jarl. 'I don't understand,' said Sarazin.
'Did you think your judge botched his sentencing by chance?' said Jarl. 'No. Qolidian wasn't made governor of Androlmarphos by accident. That was a bribe.' 'Did – did Farfalla tell you this?' said Sarazin.
'I've not asked her about it,' said Jarl. 'But share my opinion with all Selzirk. How else did Qolidian become governor?'
Sarazin, seeing the inescapable logic of this, was profoundly shaken by this proof of his own ignorance. Shortly, pursuing the truth to the death, he challenged his mother over the matter.
'Of course I bribed Qolidian,' said Farfalla. 'Everyone knows it. Everyone! The people, the courts, the Regency, Lord Regan of the Rice Empire, yes, and the pirates of the Greater Teeth for all I know. My credibility is zero.' 'Will the Regency… will they…?'
What?' said Farfalla. 'Impeach me? Over this? No. They can prove nothing. They'd lose in the courts. But, Sarazin my son – watch yourself! Before, they merely suspected you of ambition. Now they have proof of it. Sean Sarazin, king of Chenameg -, what on earth were you thinking of?'
'Myself,' sard Sarazin simply. 'My duty to myself. To be what I can be.'
