'Ware the Dark-Haired Man

by Robert Reginald

  Who are you? she inquired.

  Your strength, the shadow replied. Your courage, Queen of Kórynthia. What is done can be undone. You have more allies than you can know.

  She felt a wave of peace such as she had never ex­perienced wash over her, draining her tensions and giving her back her will. Then whatever it was vanished, as if it had never been. Finally, having no idea of how much time had passed while she had knelt there, she sent a prayer of thankfulness to Saint Auréa, and broke the silence.

  “Will you bless me, father?” she asked.

  “Most willingly, sister,” he replied, giving her his benediction.

  She knelt before him and kissed his gold ring. “I now know what I must do,” she said. “Pray for me, Tim­otheos. Pray for my husband.” Then she added, almost as an afterthought: “And pray for poor old Kórynthia.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  “WHATEVER THE CONSEQUENCES?”

  In the keep of Legalsó Vár, popularly called the “Lyuk,” which is to say, the “Hole,” the Prince Arkády tried to find a comfortable spot on which to rest. All he had was some damp straw to ameliorate the hard, cold stone of the cell. The smell of human waste, the ever-pre­sent vermin, the occasional moans of other prisoners in far-distant cells, were depressing enough, but the thought of what his father had become overrode all the rest.

  He tried again to establish a link with Princess Ar­rhiána, forcing the unpleasant conditions out of his mind, and concentrating on reaching her through the solid stone surrounding him. It was another way of riding the leys.

  Is that you, Kásha? came the faint reply.

  Thank God! he responded, focusing on and strengthening the link, gradually weaving the threads piece by piece until the whole was established.

  How far away are you? his sister inquired.

  I think they segregate the women from the men here, he indicated, so you’re probably either another level up or down, or in another wing.

  Are your accommodations as fine as mine? he added, putting a hint of laughter into his message.

  Oh, this is just like vacationing in Telámô, she noted. I have my own private room, servants to wait upon my every need, and the finest food and drink that’s avail­able in the place. All I lack is the proper companionship.

  Well, he said, perhaps I can send you a husband from among the guards. You know, there’s one burly fel­low who looks as if....

  Never you mind! she retorted. I already have four of them being trained to wait on me hand and foot, and I prefer to do the conditioning myself, thank you.

  I keep thinking about Nicky, he said, and how much I miss his energy, his sense of joy in life. He took a blow meant for me, Rhie. I should have died at Killingford. He saw the axe coming towards me, and stepped right in front of it. He smiled as he breathed his last, and grabbed my hand. I keep wondering if I could have done something to stop it.

  And if you had died, she replied, would we be any better off? I don’t think so. I miss him just as much as you, but I also know that you’re the better man to face this kind of crisis. And it is developing into a crisis. What are we going to do, Kásha?

  Get out of here, for one, he stated. Keep our sanity, for another. And I really think we are going to have to do something about father, as much as I hate being forced into that position. His mania has reached the point where it’s starting to have a serious, even an evil, impact on the na­tion. So long as we were the only ones affected, the poten­tial harm to the country outweighed any personal consider­ations. But I truly believe we have crossed the line in the opposite direction. We must take action to save Kórynthia.

  I know, she commiserated. I’ve come to the same conclusion. He’s been tainted or infected in some way by a hideous disease of the mind or spirit, one that’s destroying him—and all of the rest of us—from within. Recently, I think, the process has begun to accelerate. Things are de­teriorating very rapidly now. If we don’t act soon, there’ll be nothing left to save.

  Then what do we do, sister? Arkády asked.

  We wait for a while to lull our enemies to sleep, she replied. And when the opportunity presents itself, we strike!

  Whatever the consequences? he inquired.

  Whatever the consequences! she agreed.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  “TAKE HIM AWAY”

  Another meeting of the council was held on the fol­lowing Saturday, the Feast of Saint Boulmaros. Doctor Melanthrix continued to preside as grand vizier. Although the patriarch had been released from prison a week earlier, he had not been allowed to return to the council, and the Bishop Varlaám, the king’s choice for Locum Tenens, sat in his place. Father Athanasios had returned to the council as grammateus.

  “Is everyone here?” the king asked. “Very well, let’s begin. General Lord Rónai, please provide us with an update of our military situation.”

  The officer rose in his place and shuffled some pa­pers.

  “My lords,” he intoned, “the Arrhéni and Velyam­inóli Brigades have arrived intact at Myláßgorod, under the joint command of Count Sándor. Count Zygmunt assures me that provisions are adequate, and that the troops will be ready to march whenever we call on them. In the mean­time, Sándor has instituted a regimen of intensive training over the next three weeks.

  “Seven other brigades are in the process of being formed, using as a nucleus some of the experienced sur­viving commanders from the previous expedition. We’ve also secured the services of a brigade of Ras ash-Shamra mercenaries, who are presently sailing to Dnepróv. Our target date for leaving Borgösha is a month from today.”

  “Thank you, sir, for your excellent presentation. Any questions?” asked Melanthrix. He nodded to­wards an elderly councilman. “Lord Bunénë?”

  “Yes, sire,” the gray-bearded baron stated. “I was wondering about your plan of action once we re-enter Pommerelia.”

  “Good question,” Melanthrix responded. “General?”

  “Uh,” the officer was fumbling again with his notes, “here it is. We propose to occupy the Valley of the Spargö permanently, establishing a line of forts cutting off the County of Körvö at its lower end, and also moving to the southern end of Lake Zhordán, thereby sealing off any threat from Dharmagrigg. To the north we will place a line of forts across the end of the valley from just above Karkára to the top part of the Läuterung Hills, and gradually add Einwegflasche, Mimmäma, and the other northern counties of Pommerelia to our control.

  “Eventually,” he continued, “the pressure on the Walküri will be so great that they will have no choice but to move against us, and when they do, we’ll be waiting for them in our fortified emplacements. Once their main army has broken itself against our line, the road will be open to the Pommerelian heartland, and we’ll put Balíxira and Dürkheim under siege.”

  “A worthy plan!” endorsed the king. “Anything further before we move to our next topic?”

  “Yes,” said Lord Bunénë, “I wonder....”

  But what he might be wondering was lost forever, when he sprawled forward on the table, his forehead hitting the wood with a distinct “thunk.”

  “What’s wrong?” Kipriyán yelled.

  “Call a physician!” Prince Kiríll shouted.

  Lord Gorázd helped ease the distressed baron back into his seat, then looked up in anguish.

  “He’s dead!” he announced, then quickly moved back out of the way as Fra Tibor Türdetány rushed in.

  The doctor thoroughly examined the old man’s body, feeling him all over and poking into his orifices.

  Suddenly there was a flash of green light off to one side, and a squawk from the king that turned into a loud gasp for breath. The attention of the council members im­mediately swiveled to the end of the table, where Lord Gorázd was sending bolts of energy at close range straight into Kipriyán’s body.

  The king had been caught completely by surprise, with barely enough time to raise his rings, and he was weakening rapidly unde
r Gorázd’s relentless attack. If his strength failed, his mind would be emptied and his body fried.

  Father Athanasios, sitting to the king’s right, imme­diately centered himself, activated his own rings, drew his feet up towards his stomach as far as they would go, pressed them firmly against the end of the table, and then shot them out with all of his strength, pushing his solid wood chair directly back into the body of Gorázd, knocking the attacker off his feet and into the wall.

  The Princes Kiríll and Zakháry were immediately on top of Gorázd, pouring their combined energies into the prone body of the attacker. He fought back with ferocious strength, singeing Zakháry’s shoulder, before a blow from Kiríll’s mighty right arm sent him into unconsciousness.

  “Fra Tibor,” Athanasios called, “sedate the man.”

  The physician puffed some powder from a phial un­der the attacker’s nose, but was unprepared for the sudden reaction. The former grand vizier first went rigid, then convulsed several times in massive, body-wide spasms, be­fore finally going completely slack.

  The doctor checked for a pulse, and looked up in amazement, shaking his head.

  “Gone,” he said.

  King Kipriyán got to his feet. His hands were trembling from exhaustion and in reaction to the aftermath of the attack.

  “Tibor,” he ordered, when he had regained his composure, “have a necroprobe done as soon as possible on both men. We’ll adjourn this meeting until this after­noon, when I want a complete report. Now, I must rest for a few hours.”

  His sons helped him out of the room, followed slowly by the rest of the stunned councilmen, leaving only Doctor Melanthrix behind.

  The philosopher looked around the empty chamber, idly fingering his chain of office. He stooped to pick something from the floor, and secreted it in his purse.

  A guard came rushing back through the door.

  “Sir,” he shouted, “it’s the king!”

  Melanthrix immediately came to his feet, and hur­ried towards the exit, brushing aside the soldier.

  What is it now? he thought.

  He was almost to the exit when some instinct, per­haps the hint of a slight rustling behind him, made him suddenly fling himself sideways to the floor. A short sword or long knife slashed across his back, cutting through his cloak and breaking the skin. He rolled over without thinking, gathered his energies, and sent a bolt of ruby flame straight at the guard.

  A high-pitched scream brought the other guards on the run. They entered to find a tower of moving fire, something that had once been a man, trying desperately to find some relief from the all-consuming pain. The old philosopher was sprawled on the floor nearby, his back soaked in blood.

  The assassin toppled onto the table, finally removed by death from his misery. Melanthrix staggered shakily to his feet. A few inches deeper, and it would have been his death they would be celebrating.

  “Take him away,” the philosopher gasped, waving at the blackened body, and then limped heavily out of the room.

  No one there offered to assist him.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  “HE MUST BE...REDIRECTED”

  After putting her husband to bed, Queen Polyxena took her sons Prince Kiríll and Prince Zakháry to one side, and motioned them to join her.

  They silently followed her to Princess Arrhiána’s quarters, which she entered using a key that Arrhiána had given her.

  Across the hall, Doctor Melanthrix lay on his side in his bed, groaning from the pain. He had taken an elixir that would heal his wound within a day or two, but dared not go to any local physician for further assistance. The temporary agony would just have to be endured until it passed.

  Someone had actually tried to kill him!, he thought, appalled at the very notion. He dreaded even being touched by another being, for good and valid reasons rooted deep within his history, but to be attacked in this way meant that his vulnerability had just increased. No matter that it had failed. Others would soon try again.

  Somewhere in his dulled mind he heard the slight commotion across the corridor, but was just too tired and weak and upset to investigate. Later, he would very much regret his present lack of initiative.

  Polyxena locked the door behind her, and sat her two sons down in Arrhiána’s parlor. They gazed back at her with great concern. This was most unlike their demure mother, who usually remained in the background while the king made all of the decisions.

  “My dear boys,” she said, “I know that you have been as concerned as I have about your father’s recent be­havior. He hasn’t been himself for some months now. He has this idea that the Dark-Haired Man, whoever he might be, is somehow persecuting him, and this bizarre notion has colored all of his thoughts and activities.”

  She looked to be on the verge of tears.

  “I’ve tried talking with him,” she continued. “I’ve tried reasoning with him, but on this matter there simply is nothing of reason to be found. It has poisoned our relation­ship as much as it has changed his relation with his own country.

  “Even during the height of the wars with the bar­barians, Kipriyán never lost his sense of humor, his good nature, or his strong belief in the king as the ultimate ar­biter and guarantor of justice in the land. All of that is gone now. Instead, we see a tyrant sitting upon the throne of Kórynthia, a man who is destroying himself as he de­stroys the very heart of his nation.

  “I cannot allow this to continue. For his own sake, for the sake of Kórynthia, he must be...redirected.”

  She wiped away two tears now winding their way down her cheeks.

  “Tonight I will go to the ‘Hole’ and free my son and daughters from that awful place, and also release any of those others who have been unjustly imprisoned there these past six months. Will you help me?”

  Prince Zakháry grabbed his mother’s hands, and pulled her close, feeling the trembling of her body. He felt a great pity in his heart for what she had endured in recent times.

  “Of course we will,” he murmured.

  As he looked over her shoulder, his eyes caught those of his brother, Prince Kiríll, who nodded his head in agreement.

  “We’ve both thought for some time that something has to be done to save father from the machinations of that quack, Melanthrix,” he added. “We’ll do anything neces­sary to help return things to normal.”

  The queen withdrew from him and held him at arms’ length. She looked at him for a long moment before speaking.

  “You do understand what I’m saying here?” she asked. “Once we start down this road, there’s no going back for any of us. If we’re discovered and caught, we’ll either wind up in the dungeon ourselves, or God forbid, worse.”

  “We understand, mother,” Kiríll piped in. “But even if we don’t act, something similar is apt to happen very soon anyway. If the likes of Arkády and Arrhiána and Patriarch Timotheos can be called ‘traitors,’ then no one here is safe, you included. We have to root out the evil, even if it means saving father from his own worst tenden­cies. Then we have to go after that other malignancy. Only when Melanthrix is destroyed will any of us be able to sleep at night again.”

  “Very well,” she stated. “Meet me in the Cathedral Annex at apodeipnon. Come armed. I’ll have a forged pass to use at the keep, and I hope to persuade several oth­ers to join us. Now go! You have to be back at the coun­cil meeting this afternoon, and I don’t want us seen to­gether before then.”

  Each of them left separately, Queen Polyxena last of all. Across the hall, the philosopher Melanthrix heard the door close, but assumed it was one of the maids. He rolled over and went back to sleep, but forgot to set his internal clock to wake him as he had planned. His thoughts were muddled by the pain and the drug, and he drifted through a sea of ill dreams, dark and dangerous and drear, and finally awoke—late—to his own screams.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  “I WAS NOT THERE”

  At the resumption of the council meeting that after­noon, the tardy appeara
nce of Doctor Melanthrix caused quite a stir. He came limping through the door, dressed in an ordinary tunic and holding onto his side.

  “What happened to you?” the king inquired, clearly concerned.

  “We were attacked in this chamber shortly after the meeting adjourned,” the philosopher explained. “We were cut across the back and side and our cloak was destroyed. Fortunately, we survived. Our attacker did not.”

  Then the guards came forward to corroborate his account.

  The king faced the council members, his face set in a grim mask.

  “I take an exceedingly dim view of these cowardly assaults,” he said. “Whoever is responsible has committed treason against me and Kórynthia. I shall seek out the vil­lain, and I shall take great pleasure in seeing him disem­boweled alive.”

  Then Fra Tibor reported his findings to the king.

  “I examined the bodies of Lord Bunénë and Lord Gorázd Aboéty myself,” he said. “Bunénë was murdered, probably by Lord Gorázd, being stabbed in the side by a long, narrow needle which punctured his heart and caused almost instantaneous death. The wound was so small that it wasn’t obvious until I examined his body more thoroughly. Undoubtedly, he was killed to draw attention away from the attack on the king.

  “As for Lord Gorázd,” he continued, “his mind was empty, very much like those of the victims that Fra Jánisar and I observed several months ago. I found traces of a strong compulsion planted quite recently in his mind, al­most certainly within the last day, and perhaps as recently as this morning.”

  “How can you be sure?” asked Father Athanasios.

  “Obviously, I’m not,” the physician retorted. “However, I’ve examined four of these bodies previously, and Gorázd matches them completely, except that the signs are fresher. Our assassin is back!”

  “Who met with Lord Gorázd this morning before the council meeting?” Athanasios pressed.

  The former grand vizier’s longtime aide, Aloÿs Monck, was called to the chamber.