scents of burning hyssop, sweet clistre, tangerine peel. A short distance away, within the atrium, Saloona glimpsed revelers in sumptuous dress, garlanded with salya-blossom and ropes of garnet. As they drew near the entry, the fire witch abruptly stopped and grasped Saloona’s arm.
“I find your garb increasingly inadequate for a celebration of this magnificence — I fear your presence will draw undue attention to the both of us and prevent the implementation of our implacable charm.”
Saloona nodded, and, with precipitate steps, turned to depart. “I could not agree more, I will await you outside.”
“There is no need of that. A simple cantrap will ensure your modishness. Shut your eyes lest a disarming glitter blinds you.”
Saloona paused, disappointed, but agreed. Behind closed eyelids, she detected a subtle evocation of fireworks, then felt her clothes ruffled into slight disarray before arranging themselves into a pleasing texture.
“There,” said Paytim with satisfaction.
Saloona opened her eyes to find her inadequate garments replaced by folds of ice-colored silk and her hair enclosed by a stiff taffeta net in the shape of a chambered nautilus. Instead of the absurd tasseled slippers, her feet were shod in silver-toed mules trimmed with living gleam-ants — equally ridiculous, but far more modish. The toxic necklace, at last, seemed well-partnered with the rest of her wardrobe. Instinctively, her hand reached for her waist. She was reassured by the touch of her pharmacopoeia pouch, now disguised as an eeftskin reticule, and her fingers traced the familiar outline of the crystal vial within that contained the Ubiquitous Antidote.
“Come now,” said Paytim. “Perhaps the King himself will desire you as a partner in the gavot.”
Saloona paled at this suggestion, but her companion had already swept into the atrium. As Saloona followed, she was assailed by additional fragrant odors and a raunchier, underlying smell of sweat, along with strains of laughter and genial music. Overhead, a heaven’s-worth of lumieres shone in crepuscular eddies of violet and firefly green. Dancers engaged in the complex turns of Spur-Your-Master, or coupled recklessly in recessed alcoves where they were observed by crapulous onlookers sipping canisters of nettlefish liqueur and crimson lager.
“Is the King in evidence?” inquired Saloona.
Paytim gestured diffidently at a gilded platform. “He disports himself there, clad in the Punctilious Trousers that are his mark of office. As Earth has declined into senescence and valetudinarian decay, so too have the Paeolinas. Last of a debauched line: none will mourn his death.”
Saloona observed an urceolate figure who held a jeroboam of frothing liquor. Bedraggled yellow feathers clung to his distended torso. The remnants of a lacy filibeg clung to the twisted circlets of the Crimson Crown, its garnets glinting dully, and the Punctilious Trousers bore unpleasant stains.
Still the King capered and shrieked with laughter. He staggered between equally bibulous guests who shoved him back and forth as though he were a dandle-ball.
“It is not an impressive sight,” Saloona concurred. “Yet surely not all of these assembled are without virtue, and deserving of destruction?”
“You think not? See there! Lalula Lindinii, as debased as she is lovely behind that wimple — she skewered her entire family as they slept, then fed their corpses to the grues. And there, milky-faced Wanfredo della Ruiz, who shares his bed with a gloth. And there, the conjoined twins Dil and Dorla Klaxen-Haw, whose erotic contortions involve mewling infants and a plasmatic whipsaw. There is not a one here whom Zandoggith the Just would not condemn to ceaseless torment, if She were among us now.”
“How then will we escape punishment?” asked Saloona. “You have yet to reveal your stratagem for our escape.”
“Fortunate indeed are we that Zandoggith is not in evidence.” The fire witch ran her fingers across the false bijoux at Saloona’s throat, glancing at the malign nosegay in her other hand. She then gave Saloona a crafty look, and pointed across the crowded room. “I believe you will find refreshment at that banquette. Fortify yourself with nettlefish froth, then sow your fungal confusions amongst this swaggering crowd. I will perform an appraisal of this space and its egress; after that, the Black Peal will ring, and you and I can manage a hasty departure.”
Before Saloona could protest, Paytim darted into the crowd and disappeared from sight. Saloona wasted several minutes searching for her in vain, before deciding to avail herself of the Paeolinas’ noted gastronomy.
This she found to be disappointing. The black-backed porpoise infused with essence of quince-apple and juniper was cloying, the matalusk-hooves insipid, and a locust blancmange grossly inferior to Paytim Noringal’s jelly.
Only the nettlefish froth exceeded her expectations, a pinkish liqueur of wonderful clarity and astringent flavor. Three glasses eased her anxiety to the extent that Saloona momentarily forgot the reason for her presence at the celebration: she wandered listlessly among the throng, enjoying glimpses of her own silk-clad form in the highly polished walls, and the occasional admiring glance she received from an inebriated courtier or dame.
It was after one such had made excessively libidinous suggestions to her that Saloona, aggrieved, unclasped the necklace, muttered an activating charm, and crushed the first of the toxic vesicles beneath his nostrils.
“A sumptuous odor,” the courtier leered. Immediately, he loosed a disarming squeal and fell onto his back, wriggling arms and legs agitatedly before expiring into a sudden, deep slumber.
Saloona regarded her handiwork, then began to make her way across the crowded atrium. Every few steps, she would remove another vesicle, invoke the appropriate incantation, and crush the gemlike receptable between her fingertips. She did not pause to look back until she had made a circuit of the room and deployed every fungal poison. Only then did she turn and, with a self-satisfied smile, note the startling perturbation in the crowd.
First one and then another merrymaker leapt into the air, thrashing and whirling as with St. Vitus Dance, and as quickly dropped to the floor, insensible. Others froze in place like costumed statuary. Still others began to laugh with rash hilarity, then, with maddened eyes, tore off their garments and raced through the atrium, crowing like cockerels and gargle-doves.
“Sweet Bentha’s hips, the King’s lunacy has contaged them!” a courtier exclaimed.
Saloona stood on tiptoe, and observed a tall figure racing toward the royal dais. The fire witch dashed onto the platform, flinging aside dancers and musicians and janissaries until she stood before the King, who screamed with laughter when he saw her.
“Here’s a cormorant to be caught by tickling!” he cried, and attempted to grasp her by the waist. “Long have I awaited your return to our jolly company! Come, dance with me, sweet sot!”
“
The fire witch’s voice rang through the atrium. Gasps could be heard at the sound of the King’s given name, and a few improvident guffaws. But the King only swayed back and forth, laughter burbling from his flaccid lips as the fire witch raised her arm.
“Witness now the destruction of your witless lineage!” she cried. “Let bones and sinews be the harmonium upon which your last gavot is played!”
Dreadful light candled Paytim Noringal’s eyes. Her wristlets melted into strands of hissing gold; the basilisk comb bared its teeth. She lifted her hand, displaying a wand of glaring adamant, aflicker with abstruse numerals and unknown symbols. A fiery line traversed its length, and the rod split in two parts, each ablaze with clefs and breves and mediants, forking clews and fabrudans; every one an eidolon of some arcane note or tongue or hymn.
Saloona blinked, too stunned to flee or even move, as with a piercing cry the fire witch raised the wands above her head and struck one against the other. Silence, save for the ragged breathing of the King.
Quickly, she turned to go, deeming this an expeditious time to return to her ship, when from somewhere high above sounded a single note of penetrating sweetness.
Saloona froze, enraptured. Such a note might Estragal have blown upon his yellow reed when he first played morning to the Earth, and roused dawn from deep within the dreaming sea. She began to weep, recalling a girlhood afternoon when she fell asleep among a field of coral fungus and fairy clubs, and woke to a sky painted with shooting stars.
Never had she heard such music! The lingering note suffused her with benevolence, a taste as of hydromel upon her tongue; and every face she saw reflected her own, mingling rapture and regret, desire and satiation; transport and pensive yearning.
All save Paytim Noringal’s. With acrobatic intensity, she dismounted from the dais, paused to imbibe the
