He felt gripped in the talons of a power so much greater than his own that it was like being swept away in a tidal wave. He was content to keep his side of the bargain and then, afterwards, he would have to think about his future. As for Alloran, Fraipur now knew he did not care what happened to that evil man.
No one appeared to inhabit this corridor and the rooms at each side were merely bedrooms with little of value. The gang pressed on. Fraipur did pick up a long curved knife.
The passage ended at a green velvet door.
“Open that, and quietly,” ordered Silda. “We are bound to find a few guards on the other side. You need not be gentle with them.”
When the door had been swiftly and expertly opened, the first through were Silda and Lon, side by side.
They found themselves in a small anteroom with an open door before them and not a sound anywhere. Cautiously, they padded through. They were in a set of chambers of considerable magnificence, strewn with silks and furs, with elegant furniture, sweetly scented, plants in exquisite pots of Pandahem ware. Iron-bound oaken chests, six of them, stood in a line against one wall. Crafty Kando smiled.
“Diproo the Nimble-fingered blesses us now.”
The first chest revealed a mass of gems. The brilliance smote upward with the fierceness of the suns in the Ochre Limits.
At once the gang, crowing with delight, began to stuff their bags and sacks. Loot!
Silda said, “You task is only just begun. We must go on beyond the last door. There is—”
“What?” said Kando. “This is the treasure. We will fill our sacks and be gone. We shall be rich for the rest of our lives!”
“But—”
“Oh, no, my lady. You have shown us the treasure as you promised. We go not a step farther.”
“Kill me now and have done!”
Vodun Alloran, King of Southwest Vallia, sat on the chair in the corner gazing upon Arachna’s bed of offering and of prophecy, and brooded.
The four Katra Curses of his new Kataki friends take it! The Mantissae in the room sensed his mood. They stood silently. Perhaps they couldn’t understand why the king was so sullen and enraged when he had taken up into his hand this great prize.
Well, ran the savage thoughts of Alloran, they were just stupid Kataki women, ugly as sin, doing as they were told. What could they know of the greater diplomacy of the outside world? Two items of news, one on the heels of the other, had shaken him far more than he cared for. By Takroti! Things looked black. The great force of mercenaries he’d expected from North Pandahem was not coming. Their fleet had burned, and they’d got down to knocking hell out of their next-door neighbors. And, on top of that, a messenger brought news from his spies that a tremendous reinforcement fleet had arrived in the battle area along the border of Ovvend and Kaldi. That fleet was commanded by many famous kampeons, and with it flew King Jaidur and Queen Lildra of Hyrklana. At a stroke, Alloran had been deprived of an army and been faced with a fresh one.
No wonder he ground his teeth. Yet — yet! He had this whipper-snapper Prince Drak. Had him! He’d ask Arachna the questions and put Drak to her so that she could not complain that her sacrificial victim was not puissant enough. No, by the Triple Tails of Targ the Untouchable!
His bitter thoughts twined on. This King of Hyrklana, now. He was Drak’s youngest brother. Yet he’d been made a king, all right, with all the huzzas. Alloran had had to fight for his kingdom.
He’d set off from Vondium to regain control of his province of Kaldi and he’d been given the Fifth Army by the emperor, and a miserable lot they’d turned out to be. He’d had to recruit himself to make up the desertions. And he’d paid good red gold for the paktuns, so that, in one way, the very worst news he’d received, a deadly body blow, was to learn Zankov was dead.
Just how Zankov got hold of the gold didn’t concern Alloran. Bleakly, he stared into the future, and he flinched’ white-faced from what he saw.
But — but, he’d have the answers when Arachna took her sacrifice and prophesied! Then he would know what to do...
“What are we waiting for?” he rasped out. “Is that bastard Drak proving troublesome?”
“No, majister,” said a Mantissa. “He has been kept drugged. Listen! I hear Arachna now.”
Moments later the procession entered the room. Alloran, savage, bitter, stared eagerly, desperate for the ceremony to progress so that he would know what to do. He’d have to look away at the moment of revealment; but that made no difference. Arachna — ah! All his hopes now reposed in her and her mystic powers.
One of the baby werstings decided to act as a wersting should act. He leaped forward with his babyish snarl, all yellow teeth and dripping saliva, and was hauled up in an undignified tumble by the silver lead. The giant Womox shouldering his axe moved a little away; he might be stupid, he wasn’t silly enough not to know that a wersting like any hunting dog could give him a nasty bite. The Fristle fifi hauled in the dog and decorum was restored.
Clad in her swathing blue silk cloak with the mask drawn across the face, Arachna was assisted onto the bed. The liquid gleam like oil on water within the eyeslits gave Alloran a fresh upsurge of hope. Surely, this powerful sorceress must know the answers to his problems.
The silver gong sent out its trembling notes. The Mantissa replaced the padded hammer before returning to her place beside the bed. The second door opened sweeping the blue hangings aside and four Mantissae brought in the bound and naked form of Drak.
The questions were asked, the answers given, and then, almost gobbling in his eagerness and anxiety verging on panic, Alloran asked what he must do.
Arachna threw the cloak wide.
Alloran turned his head aside.
As though he looked through a glass where milk drained away in streaks of obscuration, Drak tried to see what was going on. His head hurt. By Zair! His head felt like the top of a volcano. He could clearly recall the girl in the white shawl saying the queen wished to see him urgently. Then what had happened? Had he heard a chink of steel? He was sure he could remember the wind in his face, and the feel of an airboat under him. Where in the name of Beng Raindrek was he now?
His vision began to clear. His wrists were bound at his back. He could see a bed. On the bed... He felt lust shoot through him like melting snow in spring. The girl reminded him of someone — Queen Lush? Yes, there was much of the queen in this beauty. And — Silda. Silda whom he had seen half-naked and bloodied and fighting like a zhantilla for his life.
Whoever she was, she was his. He struggled against the bonds at his wrists. He panted, staring, making gobbling sounds, and saliva speckled his lips and ran down his chin.
The Mantissa with the knife stepped forward to slash away the hampering bonds.
* * * *
“Listen,” said Silda, holding tightly within herself the screaming impatience she felt at these oafish villains. “The man I love is held here. In return for the treasure you promised to help me—”
“We promised nothing, my lady. I give you thanks; but we take the gems and depart.”
“You, Kando,” said Lon, hearing what Lyss the Lone said and knowing that had been there all the time, and knowing, too, it made no difference to him. “You, Kando, are a faithless cramph, and no friend of mine!”
“You’ll think differently when we are safe away with the treasure.”
Fraipur held the heavy knife in his right hand and the wisp of straw in his left. He felt, he distinctly felt, the straw twitch.
The knife was a lethal enough weapon, something like a single-edged kalider. Yet the wizard knew that the straw was immeasurably the more powerful weapon. He lifted it, turning to the gang who were prizing open the next chests.
“You will do as the lady commands. We must hurry. Follow me.”
Without waiting to see their reactions or if they followed, Fraipur marched toward a blue-swathed door in the far wall. Instantly, Lon the Knees was up with him. Silda cast a look at the thieves. Kando dropped his sack of loot. He drew his knife. The others whipped out their weapons and crowded up. With Silda leading they hurried after Fraipur and Lon. The blue-covered door swung open. The little husk of straw in Fraipur’s hand appeared to burn into his fingers. He saw. Understanding of what was going on sleeted over him like a lightning bolt.
“Lon!” he said in a firm hard voice that made the animal-handler jump. “On the bed. Throw your knife.”
Silda barged in. She saw. She felt the bile in her, the scarlet rage, the horror — and the pain and agony and love. Lon threw. At the last, Arachna must have realized, her powers shrieking a warning. But Fraipur knew that he wielded occult magics superior, frighteningly superior. Lon’s knife flew.
Alloran switched around, startled, and his hand reached for his sword hilt. The Mantissae remained fast. Their normal expectation of being told what to do checked them for those few vital heartbeats — those heartbeats that measured out the time in which the heart of Arachna ceased to beat.
Everyone was held and gripped. They stared at the bed. The knife hilt protruded from the rib cage. The body shriveled into a grayish-black leathery carapace. The gorgeous glowing face of unutterable apim beauty flowed and melted and sloughed into the low-browed, tangled-lock face of a female Kataki with the snaggle-teeth and wide-spaced eyes, narrow, cold and hostile. And yet — and yet about that face and body clung tantalizing hints of another strain. The grayish skin glinted as it were with a golden pigment imperfectly matched, the face in its bone structure might have elements of a nobility entirely foreign to a Kataki, male or female.
The long flexible whiptail tremored, rippling its entire length down the bed. The hand, the left hand at the top of the tail, flexed, opening and closing, and flopped back, cupped and still.
Thinking of Korero the Shield, the emperor’s shield bearer, a golden Kildoi with just such a powerful tail hand, Silda guessed at the truth. Arachna was the fruit of a miscegenation of Kataki and Kildoi. The quick and immediate stab of sympathy for her passed Silda and left her with the hollow feeling that the fates are unjust to all seeming, and unfitted to rule the destinies of frail humankind.
Still, Arachna need not have turned her arts into the evil ways she had. Sympathy existed. That was all. More sympathy, Silda felt, was owed Arachna’s mother...
With wild shrieks of abandonment and despair the Mantissae leaped into action. Their bladed whiptails sliced up. Daggers glittered. Kando’s gang recoiled and then, under the thrall of sorcery or because they saw there was no other way for it, they fought.
Silda ran to Drak. He turned, dazed, shaking, the sweat starting out all over his body. Alloran looked on from his chair, the sword in his fist, and he did nothing.
“Silda...?”
“Drak. Here—” With efficient hands, Silda ripped the blue silk cloak away from the shriveled body of Arachna, swathed it about Drak. She made him sit on the edge of the bed. He stopped shaking. He looked up.
“I suppose you’ll tell me. But first there must be things to be done urgently...”
“Plenty. Alloran, for a start.”
“Alloran?”
Drak didn’t know what the hell had been going on; but it didn’t take a genius to guess at most of it. Damned sorcery! He swiveled himself about and so looked on King Vodun Alloran.
The man still sat, gripping his sword. The sweat on his forehead glistened thickly, more profuse than the sweat upon Drak. He shook. The sword splintered lights into the overheated air of the chamber where Kando’s gang fought the Mantissae. Silda felt perfectly content to leave all that physical exertion to them. After all, that was what she’d taken all this trouble to bring them here for, wasn’t it?
Drak stood up. His left hand clasped the silk cloak. He stretched out his right hand.
“Silda. Lend me your sword.”
Silda gave him the drexer.
Drak, sword in hand, advanced and planted himself before Alloran.
“Before you die, Alloran, you must know—”
Alloran interrupted.
“Majister! I
do
know. I
know
. Kill me and have done. I deserve only a contemptible death.” He threw his sword onto the carpets.
Suddenly and bewilderingly unsure, Drak stared at this man, this traitor, who had caused so many deaths. There were meanings here that, on the surface were plain enough, and yet whose hidden truths might be twisted in ways that would make a mockery of justice.
Fraipur moved forward, avoiding a Mantissa who fell down choking her lifeblood out. Long Nath turned for the next one, gripped by a hatred so profound he could not resist it. Fraipur, in his turn, studied Alloran.
“Yes, San Fraipur,” said Alloran in a voice hoarse and low. “I owe you the deepest apologies. I wronged you. I feel the shame, for you have been loyal to my father and to me, and I treated you...” He shuddered. “Slay me, San, and rid the world of baseness.”
The straw twitched like a grasshopper.
“How can you be blamed for actions forced on you by another? Arachna bewitched you. Now she is dead, you are your own man again.”
“I know. I am in torment for what I have done—”
“What Arachna has done.”
Fascinated — and repelled — Silda kept silent. She could see what Fraipur was talking about and appreciated the justice of it. Just that, after all the bloodshed...
Drak drew a breath. What had happened had happened. He’d digest the details in time. Right now he had the winning of this damn war and the clearing of the whole of Southwest Vallia in his hands. He was not going to let an opportunity like that slip by, no, by Vox!
What chanced at the Villa of Poppies
That time in Southwest Vallia became known as the Hyr Kataki Jikai.
The ordinary folk just did not like Katakis. The Whiptails made their living through all the activities of slaving. For a person unfortunate enough to be taken up as a slave the world might just as well have ended. Slaves called slavemasters and slavers greeshes, a contraction in the Kregish of kleesh and grak. Kleesh, a word of so insulting a connotation it could drive a man into a frenzy of rage, and grak, that evil word meaning work, run, slave until you die beaten by the lash, added together gave vent to much of the feeling ordinary folk liable to be taken up as slave could express only in words.