A syatra is a corpse-white man-eating plant, with spine-barbed leaves and many thick fleshy tentacles sprouting from a central trunk. Growths like Venus’s-flytraps, larger than coffins, grow around the trunk. Steam drifted from the opening and a gust of raw damp air swept chokingly from the hole in the marble floor. Inch had told me that the tropical jungles of Chem on the continent of Loh are choked with these devilish syatras.
Despite the foul odors gushing from the hole the courtiers craned forward, rustling their bright robes, their golden ornaments clashing like a barbaric accompaniment to the horror going forward here. I shot a quick savage look at Queen Thyllis and as though she could read my mind she made a quick and incisive gesture. Instantly I was seized by my chains, dragged helplessly across the floor. I shouted at her, words, broken phrases, I know not what. The poor devil of Menaham had not stopped shrieking. He was dragged to the lip of the pit, through the gap in the railings, and as though merely waiting for this juicy morsel, the syatra flailed a tentacle around his waist.
Screaming, struggling, he was dragged toward the hole and the palely pink-and-green caverns of crushing horror.
Yet still he shrieked, and then as the corpse-white syatra burst full upon his shattered senses he retained a few final moments of lucidity — of pride and defiance!
“For Menaham!” He yelled it out, strong and bell-like. “I, Tyr Dopitka ti Appanshad, spit upon you all!”
And then, as the agony came on him: “Pandrite, aid me! Opaz — Pandr-”
The miasmic air of malignity in that foul pit hung no more heavily than the venomous atmosphere in the high hall. The rollers rumbled back, the marble slab closed, the old Xaffer fussily superintended the replacement of the gold railings.
“You, Bagor ti Hemlad!” Queen Thyllis spoke with caustic virulence. “One word — and that fate awaits you!”
Chapter Nineteen
I, Dray Prescot, of Earth and of Kregen, with a whole gaudy raggle-taggle tail of high-sounding names, paced my stone cell, four paces north, four paces south, over and over, and if every now and again I thumped a fist against the stone walls so that my knuckles buzzed — I felt Zair and Opaz and Djan were dealing most unkindly with me.
Many a Kregan in my position might think that Havil the Green, or Lem the Silver Leem, had gained an ascendancy. I would not countenance the thought that Grodno so much as breathed in Zair’s pure air -
although I had seen sights that made me realize the reality. I was locked in that reeking palace of Queen Thyllis of Hamal. I had seen sights that made me think that perhaps the damned Grodnims of the green northern shore of the inner sea were not so damned as others were, here. Evil flowered here. Queen Thyllis knew of those ancient Queens of Pain of Loh. She consciously modeled herself on the legends and stories of horror that clung about their names and reputations. Poor silly fat Queen Fahia of Huringa in Hyrklana was a simpering ninny compared to the vibrant evil of Queen Thyllis. Queen Lilah of Hiclantung, with whom I had passed a time or two, seemed to me in retrospect quite a charming little lady with her remote witchlike face. This Queen Thyllis overmatched them all. I, Dray Prescot, the Lord of Strombor, Krozair of Zy, knew in all seriousness that it behooved me to walk damned small while she was around. That I, inevitably, would not do so merely made me perk up a little at the thought of spitting in her eye. What, I wondered, would this Thyllis do if I hurled the bloody tail of a leem full in her cold face.
There was time to think rational thoughts in my cell, and I forcibly made myself do so. For one thing: all the peoples of Havilfar had compacted never to sell airboats to anyone of the continent of Loh. This ban extended to Pandahem. I knew why, now, a puzzle that had been with me for a long time. And the answer was simple. In the old days, when the Queens of Pain had ruled and the Empire of Walfarg, which was commonly called the Empire of Loh, extended over vast territories, over Pandahem, for instance, the Havilfarese had suffered constant invasion and harassment. Now they would sooner impale a Lohvian than sell him a voller. Simple, human — and with gigantic consequences. Another rational thought that was likely to drive me irrational was that I held fifty percent of the secrets of the fliers. I had the itchy feeling that some of the wiser men of Vallia might know about this damned cayferm. If I could get back home — home! here on Kregen and not four hundred light-years off through the deeps of interstellar space — I would crack into a program of voller construction. I knew why the fliers these treacherous Hamalians sold to Vallia, Zenicce, and elsewhere were unreliable. The mix of minerals was made impure — deliberately. The techs of the Vallian Air Service would have to shake up the boxes to free the clogged minerals when one of their fliers broke down. Also there were breakages in the linkages that controlled the boxes’ attitudes, which in their turn controlled an airboat’s flight. All this I had my hands on, and I was locked in a cell!
Do you blame me that I had worked myself up to such a pitch that when a Hikdar brought a squad along to drag me out I went berserk? I lashed at them, getting my chains around their necks, cutting their feet from under them, kicking and gouging and biting. They were frightened to kill me, and to that I owe my life. In the end they swamped me by sheer weight and numbers and dragged me off, bawling. Sink me! I do not remember those times in the decadent palace of Queen Thyllis with any pleasure. She was a cold calculating bitch. She knew exactly what she wanted to do with me. I do not believe any sexual overtones — or undertones — entered into it. She had seen me fight. She wanted to break me. She would do it in the end. I’d be dead then, but if she got any satisfaction from me I’d be damned!
So lost in mortification was I that I bellowed at her, insulting her, calling her all the Makki-Grodno diseased names I could put my coarse sailorman’s tongue around. She rode them all, wallowing in a kind of perverted masochism in the luxury of seeing me suffer. I was dressed like a popinjay, in silks and ribbons and bows and feathers.
The costume was obscene to me. I tried ripping it off, but they thrashed me and put fresh clothes on my bleeding back. I was partially senseless when I was dragged before this evil playacting Queen of Pain. She allowed one of her pet jiklos to come down and lick my bleeding wounds. I spat in the thing’s face, but my parched mouth wouldn’t bring up a single gobbet.
“Give him a drink, so that he may scream,” said the Queen. I drank — scummy water, but like Jholaix.
“I should have let Nath and Nalgre have their way with you, Queen!” I croaked up. “They would have enjoyed that.”
“Onker. Those flutsmen were paid by someone in Pandahem to kidnap me. You forget yourself, Bagor the wild leem.” She leaned down toward me, so that the gems in her solid breastplate dazzled me.
“Would you care to face my pretty jiklos in the Jikhorkdun?”
A flash of spirit shook me. Would she be such a fool?
I dissembled. “That would be sport for you, shishi.”
She did not flinch at the word.
“It would be too easy for you. My pretty manhounds would slay you too fast.” She tickled one manhound behind the ear and he purred, tongue lolling. And he was human, apim, like me! She breathed faster. “You do not like being flogged, Bagor?”
“Ask a silly question, Queen, and. .”
“You will be flogged, Bagor. Maybe even the syatra will suck on you, crunching your bones! But I will be merciful to you. Crawl to me, Bagor the zhantil! Crawl to me and kiss my foot, oh Bagor, the great Jikai!”
Well, maybe I would have kissed her foot with its green-painted toenails, just to avoid a flogging, if she hadn’t flung in that taunt about Jikai. I know what a High Jikai is. I crawled up the marble steps to her, over the crystal footstool of the throne. Guards followed my every move. They were enjoying the fun, not as much as their queen, who overmatched them in depravity, but it was fun to them all the same. I crawled up and she negligently pulled her silver-glitter dress up her ankles. She pulled it over her calves, past her knees. She craned over to look down on me, her green slanting eyes bright upon me with malicious intent, her twisted lips glistening.
I thought she would kick me in the face.
She did not. “Kiss my foot, Bagor the zhantil!”
I bent down and brushed my lips against her foot, got her big toe nicely positioned, opened my mouth
