King of Swords (The Starfolk)

by Dave Duncan

  Rigel had always believed that he was musically gifted, but now he realized that he had inherited only a small part of true elfin talent. At the end of the performance, he wanted to leap to his feet and cheer, yet the audience’s applause was no more than polite.

  After the banquet ended, the adults collected around a grand piano farther along the hall; they all sang and some of them played. Fortunately the halfling was not asked to join in.

  Chapter 9

  Eventually, as the sky outside darkened, the starfolk began slinking off in couples, but few seemed to go with the partners they had been fondling throughout the dinner. Rigel watched wistfully as Alniyat was hustled away by the giant Gacrux. As soon as Rigel rose from his chair, Senator appeared at his side, accompanied by a young human in the historical livery.

  “May I be so bold as to inquire what sort of room the halfling would prefer?”

  Rigel, intoxicated by dinner at Versailles, went for broke. “A beach cabin with good swimming.”

  “Salt water or fresh?”

  “Salt.”

  “Azmidiske Cove,” Senator told the youngster, who in turn bowed and asked if the halfling would be so kind as to follow him.

  He led Rigel to another set of imposing double doors. The moment they were opened, Rigel smelled the sea and heard a distant boom of surf. He walked through and then turned to his guide.

  “These doors are incredible. Will they take you anywhere?”

  The lad seemed surprised at his ignorance. “The portals? To any other portal within the master’s domain.”

  “How do you work them?”

  Surprise became worry. The boy developed a stutter. “You j-j-just think of wh-where you want to b-b-be.”

  “Remember it, you mean?”

  He nodded vigorously. “Will these quarters s-satisfy, h-halfling?”

  The room was no bigger than a tennis court, but not much smaller either, and furnished with exquisite taste in a writhing, curlicue style that Rigel had never seen in any book or magazine. A deck outside faced a white sand beach under a quarter moon. Dark palm tree fronds gestured gracefully against a starry sky. Wow! Life on Earth had never been this good.

  He said it would suffice.

  Reassured, the footman said, “If the halfling has any special preference for breakfast, I can have the kitchen prepare it.”

  “Thanks,” Rigel said. “I’ll decide in the morning.” The royal treatment was making him so lightheaded that he was tempted to say, “Rigel will decide.” He didn’t. “What’s your name?”

  The footman cringed. “My name?”

  “You do have a name?”

  “It is Sextus, if it p-p-pleases the halfling.” His face crumpled. “I have displeased my lord? I mean, the halfling? He wishes to lodge a complaint?”

  “Not at all. You have been most helpful. Where were you born?”

  “Here, halfling. Not here at Azmidiske Cove, I mean, but within the master’s domain.”

  “And your parents also?”

  Sextus seemed thoroughly confused by this personal interest. “My mother was, halfling. The master borrowed my father from another domain.”

  Rigel felt his scalp crawl. Earthlings were only tools, Alniyat had told him. “Is Starborn Muphrid a good master to work for?”

  Sextus brightened. “Oh, yes. Very fair. We get two whole days off a month, and this is my nine hundred and seventy-first day without punishment!”

  Puke! “That’s good. You must be proud of such a record.”

  “The halfling is most kind to say so.” He beamed. “That is why I was so worried when I was afraid I had failed to give satisfaction. When I achieve two thousand days, I shall be permitted to co-habit!”

  Rigel wanted to ask if young Sextus would have any say in choosing his roommate, but the conversation was making his gorge rise. He dismissed the man.

  Then he ran down the sand and hurled himself into the water. It was wonderfully cool and clean.

  Elves were not.

  He swam all the way across the lagoon to the reef where the surf thundered. By the time he had swum back and was trudging up the beach, the quarter moon was setting, in paradoxical ignorance of the full moon he had seen earlier in the Moon Garden. The constellations looked familiar but twisted, as if either the season or the latitude had changed dramatically. That was certainly Orion’s belt and his name star, Rigel, but he had never seen the Hunter standing on his head before. The Starlands must be in the Southern Hemisphere, or on another world entirely, but if this was another world, how could it have the same moon and stars?

  There were lights on in his cabin, and when he reached the door, he heard movement inside. He raised his hand.

  “Saiph!”

  This time he was ready for the weight of the gauntlet and sword. He hurled the door open with his left hand. The woman in the process of removing her bonnet and shawl jumped.

  “Oh! You idiot! Put that damned thing away.”

  He obeyed. “Good evening, Mira.”

  Even Saiph could not better the dangerous glint in her eye. “You expect the services of your concubine for the night?”

  “Certainly.” The bed was large, but there was only one of it.

  “Dream on.” Mira flopped into a chair. She wore a floor-length homespun dress, rather obviously padded out by many layers of petticoat. Her feet were encased in high button boots and she was not in a good mood. “I hope you enjoyed your banquet? I spent all day scraping lichen off rocks to make some sort of salad.”

  “Oh, is that what that mess was? Nasty! But I may be confusing it with the aphid puree.” Rigel sat down. He was desperately tired, but clearly they must exchange notes, and he hoped that Mira’s background as a detective had helped her learn more than he had. “Have you the foggiest idea where we are?”

  “Not a clue.”

  “Or why the shoppers went crazy and attacked us in Walmart?”

  “No.”

  “You want to go home, I assume? To Earth.”

  She nodded. “Can you get these damned boots off me? I forgot to get a buttonhook. Of course I want to go home. Even Micah would be bearable after a day in Muphrid’s kitchens.”

  “I don’t know what I want to do.” He knelt down to help her. “I need more information, lots more. But what we want may not count for zip.”

  “There must be police and TV cameras all over that Walmart store,” Mira conceded. “And I might be a tad conspicuous if I were dumped back there in this Pilgrim costume. They took my own clothes and burned them!”

  No doubt they’d done the same with his. “If I can get them to send you home—to somewhere outside of Walmart, that is—I will. I promise.”

  “That’s a deal, but if either of us sees a chance of escape we grab it, right?”

  He chuckled, suddenly realizing how happy he was, in spite of his fatigue. “All for one, but not necessarily one for all? Let’s pool what we know. Start with politics.”

  “You’ll have to deal with the politics. You’re upstairs, I’m downstairs.”

  “I’m not much on politics.” He summed up what he had learned: “The queen is likely to abdicate and there are three contenders to succeed. I think she chooses the winner, but I’m not sure of that. They might have to fight it out for all I know. We know that Muphrid takes orders from Fomalhaut, and he’s a Prince Vildiar supporter, so it sounds sort of feudal. I’ve read books about the Middle Ages.”

  “Good for you. It also sounds like gangs—the Mafia and so on.”

  “That’s as far as I got.”

  “It is?” She seemed unimpressed. “You didn’t hear that this world is in danger of falling apart?”

  He thought for a moment. “There was some mention of some high muck-a-muck who had lost half his lands somehow.”

  “And you didn’t think that was important?” Mira said acidly. “He isn’t the only one. It’s happening all over. The servants are quite worried.”

  “What do they know about it? Why
should they care? They’re slaves!”

  “They know more than you’d expect,” Mira said. “The guests bring servants of their own, so there’s an exchange of information, a sort of underground telegraph.” She glanced uneasily around the room. “I suppose if Muphrid wants to eavesdrop on us, he has ways I can’t imagine.” She pulled a face in disgust. “They’re worse than slaves. They’re livestock, Rigel, cattle. They’ve been bred for docility, like sheep and cows, so don’t dream of raising a slaves’ revolt, because they wouldn’t help you. They wouldn’t even want to help. And they have no magic. Only the elves have magic.”

  “Did you find out how magic works?” If Saiph would obey his commands, other amulets should, too.

  “No. I was kept busy the whole time. Did you?”

  “All I learned was that a starborn female mustn’t have love affairs with humans or halflings.”

  Mira wrinkled her nose in disgust. “But the old double standard applies. Remember how shocked they pretended to be when you called me your concubine? That was pure hypocrisy. Tonight I was brought here ‘to serve my master,’ and at least one other girl was sent off to entertain a male guest. Just like slavery in the Old South.”

  “Or like the fur traders who opened up the Canadian west. The voyageurs took native wives, but they would have been appalled if a white woman had married an Indian.”

  Maybe Gert hadn’t been his birth mother after all; from what Mira was saying, he might very well be a changeling conceived in a Starlands slave barn.

  Mira said, “I did get the impression that half br… that halflings are rare. There are some here, but they don’t mix with the kitchen riffraff, so I didn’t meet any. The footmen coming back from the banquet hall were commenting that you were quite ‘starry-looking’ apart from your ears. Your lack of a navel seems to matter a lot. You could be allowed to stay. That’s what status means, I gather. You get some sort of second-class citizenship.”

  “Better than nothing,” he said. “Halflings are higher than slaves, because they have free will. I was also told that starborn can’t kill one another without dying themselves—it’s a guilt thing. They can’t get around that effect by using human assassins because humans are just tools, like daggers or swords. But halflings are immune to this. We have free will and our barbarian heritage makes us dangerous. Saiph makes me extremely dangerous, like a nuclear submarine.”

  Mira looked impressed. “Can elves kill halflings?”

  “I didn’t ask, but my amulet will defend me, so I’m a public threat and I think my only hope of getting status is if Fomalhaut or his Prince Vildiar needs a staff assassin badly enough to bribe the jury, if that’s how it works.”

  “Lucky you! Is assassination a well-paying career?”

  “I don’t know and I certainly don’t intend to find out!”

  For a moment neither spoke, then Mira yawned. “Dunno about you, sonny, but I’m tired. Scraping rocks is hard work. We can share the bed, but if you get any fancy ideas about concubinage, I’ll stuff that magical sword of yours right down your throat.”

  Rigel laughed and jumped up. “I’d better not risk it, then. I’d rather sleep on the beach anyway. It’s my starborn blood, you know.”

  He came trotting back to the cabin as the eastern sky began to brighten. His sleep had been haunted by dreams of the massacre at Walmart, and once he had been awakened by a warning from his amulet when something large began circling overhead. He had crawled in under a canopy of thorny branches and gone back to sleep. Nevertheless, he felt marvelously happy. All his life he had been hiding from view, but now his secret was out in the open at last. While this new world offered new problems, it was an immensely exciting and, so far, enjoyable place to be. A halfling who owned the most deadly sword in the Starlands shouldn’t have to take crap from anyone. He had begun his day by swimming out to the reef again. If life stayed this good, he was all for it.

  The stars here revolved around Sirius instead of Polaris.

  When he walked into the cabin, Mira was still snoring away under a heap of covers.

  A glance in the mirror revealed that his scars had already faded to faint pink lines. This really was extraordinarily fast healing, even for him.

  Hotcakes and bacon? A few eggs on the side? Orange juice! He called up a clear memory of the Versailles Room and opened the portal. He stepped through into… nothing!… not even a floor. Off-balance, he started to fall into outer space, complete with blackness and stars.

  He grabbed the jamb with his free hand, but the door swung wider until he was almost horizontal, staring down at stars below him. If the sun or moon were there, he was too busy hanging on and saving his skin to bother looking for them. He hauled himself vertical by brute strength and staggered back into the cabin, shaking and streaming sweat. He slammed the door shut behind him. It couldn’t really be outer space. There had been air, a cold wind, but not a rush of atmosphere into vacuum. I’m a stranger here; which way to the edge of the world?

  As soon as he caught his breath, he tried again, this time thinking of the swimming glade and opening the door only a crack. Still there was nothing out there. He went to the nearest chair and sat down to think this over. The portal had worked for the mudling Sextus, so it ought to work for a halfling. Was he in jail? There was nothing landward of the cabin except jungle, nothing seaward except sea.

  A light tap, the portal swung wide, and there was Sextus, bowing and ready to take his order for breakfast.

  “Whatever Starborn Muphrid usually has,” Rigel said. “For two.” He watched the slave exit into some sort of pantry. The instant the door closed Rigel lunged over to it and inched it open. He found midnight and stars again, nothing else.

  Came a mumble from under a quilt. “Whatimeisit?”

  “Just enough time for you to have a swim before breakfast.”

  Her reply was brief but emphatic.

  “My father the elf taught me never to use such words,” Rigel said.

  Grumbling, Mira sat up, clutching the covers under her chin. “It is freezing in here!”

  “Just comfortable.”

  The portal swung open, and she vanished back under the bedclothes. The new arrival was not Sextus, though, but Gacrux, the beefy elf. He glanced regretfully at the bed as if wondering what he had missed, then at Rigel.

  “Ready?”

  “Ready for what?”

  “To fight the Minotaur. Don’t you remember?”

  “Only vaguely,” Rigel admitted. There had been some talk of showing off Saiph. “You really expect me to kill something in cold blood?”

  The big lout sneered. “Scared?”

  “No. It just doesn’t seem sporting if my amulet never loses. I always thought the Minotaur was imaginary.”

  “Of course it’s imaginary. We’re not ready yet, but Muphrid thought you might want to scout out the lay of the land first.”

  “I suppose that’s a good idea. Darling, if I’m not back in time, you’ll have to eat breakfast for two.”

  “Trying to tell me you’ve got her knocked up?” Gacrux said scornfully.

  “I never miss. Lead the way.”

  The big elf said, “Taygeta!” and his sword appeared in his hand.

  Rigel felt no warning tingle at his wrist, so he knew that Gacrux wasn’t planning to attack him at the moment. Maybe never, maybe later.

  Gacrux opened the portal a crack and peered out cautiously. Only when he had satisfied himself that it was safe did he open it fully and walk through. Rigel followed.

  Chapter 10

  They were at the top of an ornate marble grandstand whose cushioned seats would hold about fifty people. It stood halfway down the side of a gentle grassy hollow, a natural arena. On the skyline opposite, stark white against the ultramarine sky, stood a pair of stone columns supporting a triangular lintel, what architecture books called a pediment. It had no doors, so it might be just what it seemed, not a magical portal like the one beside the swimming hole.

 
“That’s where it will come from.” Gacrux pointed at the arch with Taygeta, then put the sword away, as if suddenly self-conscious. “You should be up there when it does, so that you can lure it down close, where all of us can see the fight.”

  “Can I go and look over the terrain?” The slopes of this killing ground were tufted with thorny-looking shrubs that might hide all sorts of rough footing. What lay beyond the skyline?

  “If it worries you. It’s obvious enough, I would have thought. Muphrid sees that it’s kept in good shape. There shouldn’t be any sharp stones or burrows to trip you.”

  “Have you ever hunted minotaurs?” Rigel asked suspiciously.

  The big elf shrugged. “Smell of blood churns my gut. I’ve watched it a time or two. There’s nothing to it. The more you wave the red cloak, the madder it gets. Just remember what Muphrid told you last night. It isn’t a bull. It has hands. It’ll try to grab you and pull you onto its horns.”

  “Right.” Rigel trotted down the aisle and vaulted over the rail at the bottom of the grandstand, dropping nimbly to the grass. A staged slaughter was not his idea of hunting and certainly not sport, but refusing to cooperate might endanger his chances of gaining status. He suspected the childlike starfolk just wanted to see him kill something with Saiph. And there was no doubt in his mind that this was also a test—of his abilities certainly, and perhaps of his obedience too. He set off to explore.

  He loped across the hollow and started up the slope, checking the footing and the height of the shrubs. There were places where a man or animal could hide from view and he was curious to know why Gacrux had drawn his sword before opening the portal. He glanced back and saw that the elf had gone. The portal doors were closed.