King of Swords (The Starfolk) (32 page)

He believed her now. Rigel rose and walked over to the bed. He bent to kiss Electra’s cheek. “You are forgiven, Mom,” he said.

She took his hand and squeezed it. Her eyes glistened, but they
always
glistened. She did not look the way a mother should look, and she wasn’t wearing any clothes under the sheet. He went back to his chair.

“So tell me about the riot in the Walmart store. You said it was Tarf’s doing.”

“Yes.”

“Why? What was he up to?”

She sighed wearily. “He was hunting for me. Vildiar’s angels must have guessed or found out that I was on Earth somewhere. There are other continua I could have been visiting, but Earth was the most likely. Hadar set his hounds on me. So while I was hunting you, they were hunting me, with much less pleasant intent.”

“Vildiar knew about me?”

“Maybe, maybe not. You would have been of no interest to him.”

“But they found you?”

“I’m pretty certain they found
you
, a lost halfling of about the right age. They put two and two together. And after that they kept track of you.”

Shit!
“I led them to you? I didn’t know I was being followed.”

“As long as they just seanced, there wouldn’t have been any way for you to know.”

Even so, he hated the thought of trash like Tarf watching his every move. “How long did that go on?”

“I have no idea,” she said. “But when I appeared, obviously tracking you, it was time for action. The Starlands would never have learned how I died, but the realm would have started falling apart, and Vildiar would have stepped forward to act the savior, claim the throne, and try to save it. I’m pretty sure that he would not have succeeded. There’s a mystical bond between the Starlands and their ruler that must be transferred by a laying-on of hands, but Vildiar has never been overly troubled by scruples or rules.”

Rigel was going to have to spend the rest of his life learning the ins and outs of magic, stuff the starfolk picked up in infancy. “So how did Tarf recognize you?”

Electra shrugged. “I told you we can’t dissemble all the time, and no dissemblance is ever perfect. I’ve been a tourist in Byzantium and Chichén Itzá and Kublai Khan’s pleasure dome. I’ve watched gladiators,
autos-da-fé
, and Aztec flower wars. And yet, even after I’d spent twenty-one years in Canada, you saw through me right away. You knew somehow that I wasn’t
right
.

“Hadar and his gang decided to dispose of me with a Cujam. Ages ago, some mage imagined an amulet that would drive earthlings crazy without affecting starfolk or even halflings. If they were ever detected, it would allow them to keep their heads and make a clean getaway. But then, by accident or evil design, some other mage twisted that magic to produce an amulet called Cujam, which has been copied so often that ‘Cujam’ is now the name of a class of amulets. The starborn are still immune, but the earthlings’ berserker frenzy is specifically directed against them. A Cujam went from being a getaway to being a deathtrap. All Tarf had to do was leave the amulet on a shelf and introvert to safety. Later, when the store was deserted, he could just extrovert back to retrieve it.”

Rigel had never expected to feel happy to have killed someone, but he had certainly upgraded the galaxy by offing Tarf Halfling.

“Why couldn’t you just introvert back home?”

“All my amulets were out in the Winnebago.”

“But by amazing good fortune Starborn Fomalhaut arrived to save the day. Who was he hunting?”

“No one.” Electra was quiet for a moment, studying her hands on the sheet. “Rigel, lad, how serious are you about
Talitha? Are you just looking for another scalp on your belt, or are you ready to make a serious commitment?”

His heart hit the stars. “You mean we
can
make a serious commitment? It is possible for a starborn and a halfling to… to pair, as you call it?”

“Not formally.” Diamond eyes drilled into him for a painfully long moment before she said, “You would always be a servant by day and a lover slipping in through a secret panel at night, but if you are big enough to accept that humble status and ignore the sneers, then your love can be very long term. I won’t say ‘lifelong,’ because your lifespan is limited, and hers is not.”

“I don’t know,” he muttered. It would be a strange and shameful existence, slinking in the shadows, sharing only a tiny part of her life.

“I think you’re up to it,” she said. “I’ve watched you for several weeks on Earth, and several days here, after your whole world went insane, and you impress me.”

That felt good, even though he didn’t fully trust her motives. “You, maybe, but I’ve never impressed girls.” She was his mother, so she wouldn’t laugh at him. “I have no scalps on my belt yet.”

Electra smiled. “I’m not surprised. It would have to be hard to explain once they got your shirt off. You haven’t told me if you truly love Talitha.”

“If she will accept me, I will love and serve her all the rest of my days.”

She seemed to reach a decision. “Very well. I will believe you and trust you with a secret. Fomalhaut wasn’t hunting anyone. He was seancing Halfling Tarf. Fomalhaut is a member of a small band of high-rank mages who call themselves ‘Red Justice.’ They have been in the dangerous business of trying to
curb the Vildiar assassins. Fortunately, Fomalhaut is an extremely fast thinker. While he was watching the chaos at Walmart, he recognized you for a halfling, extroverted to save you, and then realized that the mob was after me as well. So he introverted all three of us to Alrisha.”

“Why Alrisha?” Rigel demanded.

She shrugged in an effulgence of blues and greens. “I don’t know for certain. He had to dump us somewhere, and Muphrid is his underling, easy to bully. He must have thought we would be safe there for a day or two, and he was in a hurry to get back to Nanaimo to try and nail Tarf. He didn’t succeed, obviously.”

“And the dragonflies were not sent by Muphrid?”

“Stars, no! Muphrid is a third-rate panderer and voyeur. I doubt if his magic is even into yellow. But Tarf and the gang tracked us down somehow. Whether they were after Saiph or me or both, the swan was an easy target for them. And I was still vulnerable, having no amulets. You saved your dear old mom from a very vulgar ending. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” All very slick! It made sense, and the Red Justice story explained why the mage had refused to discuss his motives with the ignorant boy halfling. But it still wasn’t the full truth.

“And who was my father?”

Silence. Then Electra said, “It’s late. Let’s save that part of the story for another day. We have a few centuries ahead of us to get to know each other, Son, assuming that—”

Knuckles rapped on the door.

She grimaced. “Enter!”

Alfred peered in. “Majesty, you asked to be informed…”

“Thank you. I will tell the princess.”

The secretary left. Electra stared blankly at the foot of the bed.

“Mother?”

She shivered, as if the room was suddenly too cold for her, and her starry aura faded to pastels. “No, it is you who must go and tell the princess! Rigel, she is losing her father and the weight of the Dziban domain is descending on her shoulders. Millions of lives now depend upon her Naos power. Her child has been stolen from her, and she stands alone in the most dangerous place in the universe—between Vildiar and the throne. She desperately needs people she can rely on. She is resting in the room directly across from this one. Go and tell her that Kornephoros is about to die and she must go to him. And then, for stars’ sake,
help
her!”

“What use can I be?” he asked bitterly. “I know nothing about magic, nothing about the Starlands, nothing—”

The queen’s eyes blazed polychrome fire at him. “She needs someone she can trust utterly, someone who will not be turned or bought or intimidated by Vildiar and his pseudo-Nazi savages. Are you up to that, my son? Or is your love so frail that it fades already?”

“I am not a hero!” he shouted. “I wasn’t brought up to fight battles and duel dragons.”

She shook her head. “These are the Starlands, Rigel Halfling. Fantasy is reality. You must be Sir Lancelot or be nothing. Are you truly the son I am so proud to have borne or just a fake on the make?”

More manipulation! Rigel rose and put on his helmet. He bowed to the queen and strode out of the room without another word.
Damn her!

T
he opposing room was very similar to the queen’s, being almost as large and furnished with the same elephantine furniture and plaid wool. The bed curtains were closed, but Talitha sat huddled on a straight-backed chair with her hands clasped in her lap. The room’s single lamp cast an uncertain glow on pale cheeks and eyes reddened by weeping, and the way she looked up at him reminded him of deer and car headlights. He knelt at her feet.

“The queen sent me to tell you that you must go now to your father.”

She nodded.

Rigel took a very deep breath. “She also told me that you are in need of a helper you can trust completely, someone who will not be turned or bought or intimidated by Vildiar and his thugs. If that is the case, and the position is still open, I wish to apply for it. And I ask to be considered for lifetime tenure.”

Her gaze flickered past him just as a voice said, “Brave talk!”

Before the second word was out, Rigel was upright, sword in hand.

Starborn Cheleb was sitting in another of the overstuffed chairs and had been hidden from him by the bed. As always, he could make no guess at her age or character, but even by elfin standards she had a bony face, and her eyes reflected the candle with an unearthly copper tinge.

He dismissed his sword and bowed to her. “It came from the heart, starborn.”

“Obviously not from the head. Are you congenitally insane or just driven crazy by rut?”

Not knowing the correct answer, he snapped, “Neither! Are you always so insulting?”

“Insult a halfling?” she mocked. “Oh, my! Well, then, hero, are you willing to join an expedition to rescue Imp Izar from his father’s stronghold?”

“I’ll do anything my lady wants.”

“You’re a cocky young braggart, boy.”

“You’re an evil old cynic.”

Talitha rose and quietly kissed his cheek, the part not covered by Meissa. “I accept your offer of help, Rigel Halfling, and will give serious consideration to your application for lifetime tenure.” She managed a brave smile. “Now escort me to my father’s deathbed.”

He offered an arm, she took it, and even that gentle touch of her hand felt like progress. They walked out the door and down the corridor together. Cheleb did not follow. Rigel considered telling Talitha what he had learned of his parentage and decided that the time was not right.

“Who was your acid-tongued friend?”

“One of the oldest of the starfolk, if not the oldest. She jokes that she watched the Egyptians build the pyramids, and
watched from a window when Troy welcomed the wooden horse. She is also one of our greatest mages.”

“Red Justice?”

Talitha’s grip on his arm tightened. “Who told you about that?”

“Electra.” He felt rather smug about being able to say so, and ashamed of himself because of it.

“Yes. We are plotting a rescue, and I do desperately want you with me.”

“I’m your man.”

She squeezed his arm harder. “That too. But later.”

As they started down a long staircase, he said, “What happened to your father? All I heard was that he was very sick, and then that he was dying.”

“Tarf killed him.”

“Tarf? I know your father was trying to revive him, but I was sure he was dead. In fact your father gave up and said he was.”

“Poison. His hands turned black, and his knees too, and they began to rot away in front of our eyes. He kept screaming. We called in mages, but none of them could help. They couldn’t even stop the pain. It was like acid, horrible, horrible!”

“Hands?” Rigel said, remembering his last sight of the regent. “And knees?”

“Tarf’s blood was poison. It was the vilest magic I’ve ever heard of. The mages tested Muscida’s blood, and it was the same. Not the woman’s, just the men’s. Two sphinxes got blood on their paws and licked it off. They died very quickly.”

“I got some splattered on me too! And I must have stepped in it.” Menkent had dropped him in the pool very soon afterwards—had that saved his life?

Talitha said, “The amulets Wasat gave you may have shielded you. Father always refused to wear anything like that, but if you ever fight any of that gang again, darling, you must be very careful not to get any of their blood on you.”

That was much like telling him not to sweat.
What was it that she’d said? Darling! Talitha had called him darling!

The moment they went through the portal to Canopus, Rigel caught a whiff of something rotten. The smell grew worse as they proceeded along the corridor, and by the time they descended a short flight of steps into a courtyard, it had become an overpowering, nauseous stench. The courtyard was small by palace standards, brightly lit by what seemed to be half a dozen moons, and had been turned into an emergency hospital. Regent-heir Kornephoros lay on his deathbed in the center, while a few dozen starfolk stood watch in a circle around him, giving the bed a wide berth. Rigel recognized Fomalhaut and, at the far side, Prince Vildiar looming over all of them. The great disk-shaped gold collar of the regency lay like a puddle of light on a table behind the dying man’s head.

He was the source of the smell, of course. His legs had rotted away to black goo and his arms had melted to stumps. The question now was how much more of him could decompose before he died. He was mercifully unconscious—had been for hours, Talitha whispered—and the end was obviously very near. His face and chest were a bruised purple, his lips swollen sausages, and every breath was a climactic struggle. After each one the tension in the court would steadily rise. Then he would gasp once more, and the waiting would start again.

Seemingly oblivious of the putrid odor, Talitha entered the circle and approached the bed. She bent as if to kiss her father. Fomalhaut hurtled forward, caught her arm, and drew her back.