Bazil Broketail (51 page)

The men at the dinners and parties were hard-faced and exciting. Their women were clever and sharp and wonderfully deferential to Besita, always calling her princess and always speaking so respectfully.

And now there was the Doom which, far from being the terrifying monstrosity that she had always believed in, was in fact a fascinating “person” with so many problems and so much work that one had to feel pity for it.

Or was it a he? She had not yet entirely made up her mind about this—how could a mere “it” show such sympathy, such understanding of one and one’s problems in life.

And it was an orphan in a way, a natural object of pity. It had been created and then just cast off and told to work for the rest of time to bring peace in the region and end the aggressive warlike expansion of the Argonath cities. One had to feel sorry for the poor thing.

She sat in a comfortable chair made of bones from the recently extinct mammoths of the Hazog and cushioned with stuffed foxes and martens. On her feet were the most fascinating shoes, made of lizard skins and decorated with butterfly wings pasted on with a clear lacquer.

The great rock filled one side of the room and the red spot glowed on its front.

Three cages, draped in black velvet to hide their occupants, were hung in a row to one side. All that could be seen of them were eyes glittering through holes in the velvet in the central cage.

She had become accustomed to their presence; they hardly registered to her as human beings anymore. Instead, she focused on the red spot—it was the “active node” according to the Doom, where “it” was located at that moment.

The audience began, as had the others, with a long monolog from the Doom. It had much to say concerning the long war with the Argonath.

The Doom was taking her into its confidence. She was very important for the near future of the entire region. She and the Doom together would have to share the burden of administering it and bringing the war to an end.

It was enormously flattering to be addressed like this.

“You see,” murmured its Mouth, “the present situation cannot be allowed to continue. Too much bloodshed and«destruction is the result of all this stubborn clinging to imperial pretensions and designs.”

“You, my dear, are the answer to this. You shall be the greatest queen in history, and if you so desire Thrembode shall be your consort.”

She nodded. Yes, having the handsome Thrembode as her consort would do very nicely. She would be the ruler though, not the dashing magician—oh, how he would hate that. She smiled to herself.

The Doom continued. “Once we have seen you placed on the throne of Marneri, we shall be able to expand our trade and there will be wealth enough for everyone. The people of the Argonath will benefit immensely, of course. Taxes will be reduced, the towns and villages will grow rather than the graveyards. Can you see it like I do? This near future of peace and plenty.”

The red dot pulsed. She struggled. In fact she was seeing herself and Thrembode, living in utter luxury and ruling over Marneri, but she made herself think about villages and farms and common people instead.

“Yes, I think I can. I think it will be wonderful.”

The Doom was pleased.

“My dear princess, who shall be queen in Marneri, I do feel we have come to a very useful meeting of minds, do you not agree?”

“Oh yes,” she gushed.

“I would ask of you a favor, a simple thing.”

“Oh anything, I’d be glad to help.”

“I am but a rock, trapped here immobile, built to serve the world. Yet I live in a sense, I am someone and I have feelings nonetheless. Can you understand that?”

“Oh yes,” she said.

“I want you to touch me. Put your hand on the red spot where you see it glowing.”

She was moved—the poor thing was reduced to this when it needed intimacy! And at the same time she was revolted, while at the back of her mind ancient proscriptions shrieked uselessly.

Abomination, they cried. Evil!

She clasped her hands together on her bosom, unsure.

“It will not harm you in any way.” The Doom sounded just slightly unhappy.

“Is it hot?” she said.

“Not in the slightest. What you see is not caused by any energies known to you. Come, I hunger for your touch, Queen Besita.”

She giggled and reached out and put her palm on the stone. There was a faint tingling, a sense of presence in her thoughts.

“Can you feel me?” said the Mouth.

“Yes, at least I think so. There is a tingling, a sense of something other.”

“Good, we have made contact then.”

“Yes.”

“We shall do this again.” The Doom’s Mouth had grown husky, quite emotional.

“We shall?”

“Yes, and in time we shall perfect the contact. We shall know each other well, my princess.”

“I—I think you’re right.” She felt a weird excitement. This was a strange magic, indeed. She was so privileged to witness this, she felt as if she had been plucked from an undeserved obscurity and taken to the heights.

“In time we will be able to speak without the need for words and voices.”

“Oh, how, uh, amazing,” she said.

“Yes,” said the Doom.

The hook was in her, and in time she would be his, as open to his will as any of his human “operatives.”

And now it was time to depart. The Doom bade her farewell and made apologies, but a conference was scheduled and it had to be dealt with.

With a rumble of tackle and the steady clanking of chains the Doom stone rolled away from the great window and sank down the Tube. Sliding doors slid across the opening to seal the Tube once more. The small door by which she had entered opened and smiling slave girls beckoned her to follow them.

Fifty feet below her the Doom halted above the main audience floor. There, assembled beneath it were the executive officers of its hegemony.

The generals of the armies, clad in black leather and burnished steel were in the front. Beyond them stood a group of senior magicians, all in the black robes of the Padmasans. To one side a phalanx of senior administrators, to another chieftains from the savage tribes that bent the knee to Tummuz Orgmeen and the power that sat in it.

“Welcome, all of you,” said the Doom’s Mouth.

The men and women in the audience were from all races and all parts of the world, but they shared a certain glitter in the eyes. They were a people intent on satisfying their greed for power and wealth. In the depths of their collective heart was a boundless hatred for the rest of the world.

They murmured salutations to the Doom while bowing low to it. After a moment it continued.

“As you have been informed, we have shifted our strategy for the coming campaign. Our enemy either deduced what we were going to do or learned of it from a traitor in our ranks.”

There was a pause.

“Believe me when I say that if it was treachery then that person will be found out, and then…”

There was a slight collective shudder at the thought of what would happen to such a person.

“Anyway, we are as flexible as our enemy—we have changed our plans. The Teetol will be of little use to us this year, the enemy struck the northern tribes hard in the winter. Wishing Blood cannot rouse them now.”

“But we have had great success with the new breeding program. Imp production has increased to a thousand a month. Our agents in Ourdh are to be congratulated for securing so many females.”

A couple of the magicians nodded tightly to the others, acknowledging the polite applause.

“And so we have the augmentation of force needed for the coming season’s work. General Erks will outline the strategy we have agreed on.”

General Erks stood forward and climbed the dais set to the right of Doom’s mass. He was a tall man with grey hair and cold eyes, a renegade from the kingdom of Kassim far away. He had served the Doom Masters themselves in Padmasa for many years, and they had sent him to the new Doom in Tummuz Orgmeen to lead the new armies.

Erks cleared his throat before speaking. His voice was low and harsh.

“We have enough force available this year to mount at least three diversionary assaults before we throw in our main army. The enemy will have to respond to our feints, however, because each one will be large enough to threaten devastation to large areas. Then when their forces have been scattered up and down the frontier, we shall cross the Oon with thirty thousand imps and attack them in Kenor. We expect to take an advantage of two to one into the battle.”

The audience nodded and murmured.

“We shall crush their main force and then move in to destroy their smaller forces. Ultimately we will move across the Malguns and into the coastal provinces. By midwinter I expect to have Talion and Marneri under siege.”

More murmuring and nodding followed.

The Doom rattled the cage of the Mouth.

“And by next summer we will be masters of the Argonath!”

They raised their right fists and gave the Doom a great cheer.

It was evening before Relkin finally found his way back to the place on the wall opposite the narrow window. He waited nervously crouched beside the turret, eyes glued to the window.

For a long time he saw nothing. He began to wonder if something had happened to Lagdalen. The window was in a quiet part of the keep, but that was no guarantee of her safety.

Feelings of despair were beginning to grow in his heart and the sun began to sink into the western horizon before at last he saw something move within the window.

He waved and looked again. It was Lagdalen at last.

Quickly he slipped over the wall and descended, taking extra care with the handholds now. He could not allow himself to fall when everything was so close to success.

He stopped when he was slightly above the position of the window on the opposite wall. Now came the hardest part, the likeliest place for failure.

Lagdalen had dangled the end of the belt out the window and was braced on the inside with the other end wrapped in her hands.

There was a dark emptiness beneath him, a symbol of the death waiting to collect him. He jumped, for a moment he was flying above the abyss, then he slammed into the stones of the keep, slipping, his fingers scrabbling at the hard surface; he was falling, and then the leather was under his hand and he caught frantically at it and it held, right at the utmost end.

Lagdalen was pulled hard against the window but she held on. He dangled for a moment there, then he got his other hand on the strap and his feet against the wall.

He walked himself up, testing Lagdalen’s strength to its limit. She had both hands gripped together and her feet braced against the window, but she could not hold him for long.

Just as she reached that point, with the strap finally slipping from her numbed fingers, he flung out a hand and caught the edge of the window.

A few moments later he was inside. Lagdalen was standing there, sobbing with relief, her hands livid with the marks of the strap.

He grabbed her and held her tight and noticed that they were almost exactly the same height. In Marneri six months earlier she had been the taller by a fraction.

“Lagdalen, you did it,” he hissed, keeping his voice low.

She sobbed again, then cleared her throat.

“Did you get it?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“I’ve been hiding in a storeroom down there, there were imps here earlier. But I waited for hours—I thought something had happened to you.”

“There were guards on the top of the wall for a while. I had to go back and hide in the city.”

“I was going crazy with worry. I almost went back to the lady.”

“I thank the goddess that you waited, and for that I am in your debt, Lagdalen of the Tarcho.” He took her hand and bent and kissed it.

She balled it into a fist as if she was going to punch him, but in the end merely ground it against his chest and pushed him away.

“You are silly and too young for me. Come on, let us get back. I pray the lady is still alive.”

“So do I,” he murmured, while his thoughts ran on to the hope that he would live long enough to be old enough for Lagdalen of the Tarcho.

They returned, sneaking through the public halls until they could reenter the secret passage and make the transition to the underground world.

Once more they crept through the forge and heard the cracking of whips and the hammering and boiling of metal. Then they had to go back through the hole into the deep tunnel. For Lagdalen this was almost beyond her strength and she nearly fell, but Relkin was there, and he steadied her at a critical point and she reached the tunnel floor a few moments later.

They moved down into the zone of luminescent slime. They had gone perhaps halfway back when they heard sounds coming from in front of them: a clank of steel, a rumble of voices and a sharp bark of command.

“Search party,” hissed Relkin, turning and pulling Lagdalen after him back down the tunnel.

Small lights had appeared now, much farther down the tunnel, and fortunately too far away to illuminate them. They ran back until they found another tunnel opening. This they entered and continued their flight.

Eventually this tunnel began a steep descent and turned sharply to the right. Relkin was not sure, but he suspected they were heading back beneath the keep and the vault.

Then they emerged onto another hidden review gallery above a large chamber. This one was filled with women, poor wretches chained in pens along the walls where they existed while their bodies brought forth imp after imp, one a month until death brought them merciful release.

Lagdalen felt the hair on the back of her neck rise. Relkin’s throat had gone dry. Hundreds, thousands of women pregnant with imps, chained like animals and supervised by other women who wore the black uniform of Tummuz Orgmeen.

“How could anyone participate in this?” he said in a choked whisper.

Lagdalen had no answer to that. The people of Tummuz Orgmeen were a fell folk with cold hearts. They had flocked here to serve the Doom, hoping to benefit from its triumph.

In another huge chamber the Doom’s eugenics masters were experimenting. Relkin saw a cow, doomed to die in giving birth to the enormous thing that had been grown within her. The image of the poor cow, her belly bloated obscenely, stayed with him as they went on past the hellholes and into further tunnels.