King of Swords (The Starfolk)

by Dave Duncan

  “You did say urgent?”

  Rigel started awake. “What? Yes, very.” His nap must have been brief, but it seemed to have helped. His muscles were not shivering quite as much.

  “Good.” Menkent cantered past the sphinx at the gate and straight up the staircase, ignoring the angry shouts that followed him. “Always wanted to see what’s up here.”

  He was probably kidding, because he knew exactly where he was going through the maze of corridors. Talitha and a circle of a dozen or so starborn ladies were dining in a hall even larger than the Dolphin Room, each one seated at her own small table. Starling maidens were serving them, while human servants bore platters of food in from the kitchens and tended the heaped sideboard. The queen was not present. Courtly ladies cried out in alarm and disgust at the sight of a centaur invading their banquet.

  Talitha shouted, “Rigel!” and came running to his side as he made an unsteady dismount. “Oh, Rigel, Rigel, I was so worried!”

  For a giddy moment he thought she was going to throw herself at him, but then she recoiled. “You’ve been wounded!”

  “It’s nothing.” He had forgotten the cut on his shoulder, which was already closed and healing. He was back on the angel team, apparently, anger forgotten. She was calling him ‘Rigel’ and not ‘halfling.’”

  “Zozma sent word! You’re a hero! I’m so proud of… What’s wrong?”

  Rigel glanced up uneasily at the centaur’s idiot grin.

  “Yes,” Menkent said, “tell us what was so urgent.”

  “Would you like something to eat, Menkent Centaur?” Talitha asked.

  He glanced longingly at the sideboard. “Well, if you don’t mind, Your Highness…”

  “Please help yourself.”

  “What do centaurs eat?” Rigel asked as the big fellow headed for the feast. The sight of so much food was a reminder that he had not eaten since dawn and now the sun was setting.

  “Anything they can get their hands on. I do hope he stays off the rugs. Now, tell me what’s wrong.”

  “Tarf was there, and Hadar, and one called Muscida.”

  “Yes, yes. I heard. Hadar escaped, and you killed the other two. What is wrong?”

  “The first thing Tarf said to me was, ‘Pretty boy Rigel has come to change his sponsor already? Momma didn’t waste any time.’”

  Talitha frowned blankly.

  Rigel said, “Tarf and Tegmine heard you say that Izar was going home with Baham.” The Baham whom she did not completely trust. “I think you should check on him.”

  “What?” She lost color. “Why? But… Oh, Rigel! No! No! Starfolk do not do things like that!”

  “But halflings do. That’s what we’re for, isn’t it? You starfolk only tolerate us to do your dirty work. Hadar and his gang would see it as a fair offer: You send them Saiph, meaning me, and they send you back your son. Except they wouldn’t, of course.”

  “I must tell the queen!”

  “Who will do what?” Rigel said. “Send for Vildiar? If you can even find him, he will swear on the Star of Truth that he has no idea where his son is and you’re not competent to look after him anyway.”

  She nodded. “You’re right. We must go to Izar immediately!” A dark cloud of worry had gathered around her.

  “How?”

  “My root portal is here in Canopus. I’m just trying to think of the fastest way to get there.”

  “By centaur! Come along.” Rigel grabbed her wrist and pulled her over to the sideboard, where Menkent was eating his way through an entire roast goose under—actually over—the horrified eyes of the palace staff. He looked down at Rigel with a gleam in his eye and a mouth too full to speak.

  “Still urgent,” Rigel said. “The princess and I desperately need to visit Spica.”

  Talitha said, “Rigel, it’s a terrible insult to ask a centaur to be a horse!”

  Menkent gulped his cud disgustingly. “I don’t mind. ’Long as it’s urgent, so I have an excuse, and you tell me why. Where to?”

  “Ascella Square.”

  “Hop on, then.” Still holding half his goose, the centaur reached for an entire ham to go.

  Once they were both mounted, with Talitha holding on to him and Rigel holding on to her—which made this the best part of the day so far—Menkent picked his way carefully down the long staircase. “You have no idea how hard it is to balance like this,” he said cheerfully, but he continued to alternate bites of ham and goose.

  “We’re very grateful for your help,” Talitha assured him.

  “My pleasure. Any chance of a fight in this? My dam promised me one today, and I didn’t get it.”

  Could he mean that Bellatrix was his mother?

  Talitha said, “Probably not. You know my imp, Izar?”

  “Course! Great colt. Fearless.”

  “We’re worried that he’s been kidnapped.”

  The centaur’s roar of outrage startled the sphinx at the bottom of the stairs, who sprang around with her claws out.

  “Futon stars! Are you sure there won’t be a fight? That’s one I would really enjoy.”

  The sun had just set. The streets were almost deserted, but Menkent was feeling his load, and kept his pace down to a fast walk, while still crunching goose bones.

  “Describe Spica to me,” Rigel said. He was close enough to nibble Talitha’s ears if he wanted to. He did want but didn’t do it. Her scent was intoxicating, all the more so because it didn’t come out of a bottle.

  “It’s still tiny. I started it after my pairing with Vildiar ended—there is a river that provides good swimming and fishing, some trees, half a dozen buildings, and a unicorn stud. That’s all, really.”

  “How many people, apart from you and Izar?”

  She thought for a moment. “Six. Over twenty if you include earthlings. A couple of the females… Two of the women are expecting.”

  Rigel was left with the unpleasant certainty that Talitha, like the rest of the starfolk, made small distinction between two-legged and four-legged livestock. She ran both unicorn and human studs.

  “What a day this has been!” she said. “Tell me about the fight.”

  “Not sure I can. I was too busy to notice, and my amulet did all the work for me. There were four of them: Hadar, Tarf, and Muscida, plus a halfling girl called Adhil.”

  “Another of the brood, one of the worst.”

  “There must be someone else by that name, because when I arrived she and Tarf were… um, hard at it.”

  “Rigel, Rigel! Any evil or crime or perversion you can imagine, they practice. They make dares to find out who’s the worst. Incest is nothing to them; they know they’re sterile, anyway. Don’t you understand yet why I don’t want my son back in their clutches?” She leaned back against him. “I’m sorry I shouted at you earlier.”

  “Then you owe me a second kiss,” he whispered. He slid his hands up her body until they touched the undersides of her breasts. She stiffened, then relaxed when he did nothing more. He said, “And I shouted at you, so I owe you one too.”

  “We’ll see,” she murmured. Had she noticed that Menkent’s ears were tilted backwards? “That door under the cherry tree, centaur.”

  They dismounted and climbed the six steps to the door.

  Menkent followed right on their heels. As Talitha reached for the handle, he said, “No! Let me go into the house first. There may be a trap, and your halfling’s fought enough today.”

  Curiosity killed the centaur, but Rigel was certainly in no shape for another battle, tonight or hopefully ever. “Good thinking… my lady.” He had almost called her “darling”! “Hadar may be waiting inside. Any servants?”

  “No. You think I wouldn’t know if the lock had been forced?” But she did stand aside to let the centaur squeeze his bulk past them and open the door. A stud on one of his ears lit up as he went inside.

  Rigel winced at the sound of iron shoes on hardwood floors. “I need a lesson in magic. If Hadar and the others did want to ra
id your domain and carry off Izar, how would they manage it?”

  She hugged herself, which was a waste of good hugging. “Easy. By air. I have a link to Dziban, so two hops would do it—Phegda to Dziban to Spica.”

  Thumps from inside suggested that the centaur was now climbing stairs. Talitha shuddered. Then came a resounding crash and some baritone curses. A few moments later, Menkent backed out of the door. “It’s a little tight in there, Your Highness, but there’s no sign of intruders except that somebody’s knocked over your china cabinet. I’m sure he meant well.”

  “That doesn’t matter. Thank you. Now let me in to open the portal.”

  “And this time I’ll go first,” Rigel said.

  Chapter 27

  Saiph in hand, he stepped through the portal and into a spacious room that was obviously modeled on some North American ranch. Roof, walls, floor, and furniture were all of wood, decorated with bright rugs, cushions, and colorful Mexican hats. A nostalgic odor of wood smoke lingered, although the hearth in the great fieldstone fireplace was cold, and the evening twilight cast a romantic glow over everything—everything, that is, except for the dead body lying almost at his feet.

  He backed out hurriedly, pulling the door closed so that Talitha would not see. “Bad news,” he said, and told her.

  “Get out of my way!”

  He let her go, and followed. She twisted a finger ring to make light. The dead man was Albireo the swanherd, and he had obviously been cut down while trying to reach the portal.

  “Izar! Izar!” Talitha started racing through the ranch house yelling her son’s name, with Rigel right behind her. Then they went outside and explored all the other buildings. It was a fruitless search, as she admitted later, because she wore an amulet that could track her son, alive or dead, and it was not registering him in Spica. Though they did not find Izar, there were bodies everywhere—men, women, starfolk, halflings, children of all species. Rigel counted twenty-two corpses, and there could have been more out in the pasture. Most had blade wounds, a few had been shot through with arrows, and one or two had been burned almost beyond recognition. Every biped who had been in Spica was dead, with two exceptions.

  Izar was gone, and Starborn Baham was conspicuously not among the bodies they found.

  They finished back at the house, standing outside the front door with Rigel’s arms tight around Talitha, who was weeping uncontrollably. He was very conscious of the body contact. Why must what he had wanted so much happen under such horrible circumstances?

  “I am being a weak, useless, childish fool!” she mumbled.

  “No. You starfolk are not accustomed to atrocities. On Earth we live with them all the time—TV, magazines, newspapers, movies, books, all full of violence, real or invented. You’ll be okay in a few minutes, when you can think straight again. The important thing is that they took Izar. They didn’t hurt him.”

  They might have frightened the poor imp half to death, though, and they probably had not been gentle.

  Menkent, who had galloped off to check on the livestock, returned in a thunder of hooves, breathing hard and shining damp in the starlight. “Fourteen unicorns are alive,” he panted, “and one is dead in the field. A puma cub is dead in its cage. There are four live cows, two live swans with some cygnets they wouldn’t let me near enough to count—thought they were going to eat me—one dead starborn, and four dead dogs.”

  “Four?” Talitha said, rubbing away tears with the back of her hand. “We only had three dogs.”

  “One very big dog?” Rigel asked. “Where is it?”

  It was Turais, of course, lying in the pasture near the dead unicorn, which Talitha identified as Izar’s Narwhale. Having explained about Fomalhaut’s gift, Rigel knelt to examine the scene by the light on his helmet. Turais had put up quite a fight, judging by the way the ground was torn up.

  “This is more than just dog blood. Turais has blood on his muzzle, see?” He also had bloody flesh between his teeth. “I hope he took a few of them with him.” If he had, the attackers had carried off their dead. How many of them had there been? Wishing that he could read the signs like trackers in stories did, he stood up and offered Talitha another embrace, but she had recovered her poise and pretended not to notice the invitation.

  “Dead starborn over here,” Menkent said

  Baham lay with two arrows in him and a sword by his hand, on grass painted silver by moonlight, looking like some romantic lithograph of a fallen hero.

  Talitha choked and turned her back. “I misjudged him. He wasn’t a traitor. He died doing his duty.”

  That was certainly the obvious interpretation. Rigel Halfling, that overly suspicious soul, could speculate that the guard had betrayed his charge and then been double-crossed by the killers. With no way to prove or disprove the possibility, he saw no reason to mention it.

  “Now what?” he said. “Back to Canopus so that we can complain to Queen Electra?”

  “Back to Canopus and burn the royal ear!”

  They headed for the house. Neither of them spoke until Talitha stopped to look down at a corpse sprawled a few steps from the front door.

  “Caph! She was my nurse when I was a child, Rigel. She is in all my earliest memories. Stars know how old she was, but she had no ambition, only a love of imps. Caph lacked enough magic to imagine her own domain, and I doubt if she ever even paired. She just lived for other people’s children. She helped me with Izar and stayed on after he had outgrown her care.”

  “Then we must see that her death and all these other deaths shall not be in vain. Have Vildiar’s thugs ever committed a massacre like this before?”

  “Never! I doubt if there has been such an atrocity in the Starlands in the last thousand years.”

  “So now they have overreached themselves. Thanks, indirectly, to Starborn Fomalhaut, I think. As soon as Saidak arrived in Canopus, Tarf or Tegmine must have run to Front Street, portaled home to Phegda, and told Hadar about Izar. Daddy wanted Izar, and Izar had gone to Spica, so the brutes decided to come and get him. Would any of the other halfings besides Hadar have made that decision?”

  Talitha nodded. “Botein might have. This bloodbath seems too clumsy for Hadar, but carry on.”

  “They came here. Izar was waylaid out in the fields riding Narwhale, yes? If Baham was escorting him, he would certainly have been mounted too, which explains why he was shot down with a bow. Perfect. But the kidnappers had not reckoned on the guard dog. They found they had far more of a fight on their hands than they’d expected. By the time they’d dealt with Turais, either Izar himself or Baham’s runaway mount had raised the alarm. They were seen. Not wanting to leave witnesses, they killed everyone. But—don’t you see?—this was decided before anyone knew that the queen was back.”

  Talitha laughed thinly. “And she won’t stand for it! Oh, do they ever have a surprise—”

  “Something’s coming,” Menkent said, staring up at the skies with his ears askew. “A pegasus, I think.” A bow flashed into his left hand.

  “The only pegasus I know is Markab,” Talitha said. “That means Vildiar.”

  The centaur notched an arrow. “It’ll be a tricky shot in this light, but I’m good. I’ll get him for you.”

  “No!” she snapped. “I want my son back.”

  The centaur sighed and lowered his bow, but did not put it away.

  Rigel had known from his first glimpse of Gienah the swan that she was aerodynamically impossible. A flying horse must be even more so, unless it had a chest a kilometer wide to hold all the muscle it would need. Yet the great beast circling lower in the starlight undoubtedly had the traditional pegasus shape—a handsome white steed with plumed wings. Its rider had seen their lights and was coming in to land nearby.

  Land the pegasus did, as lightly as a bee, although it was the largest horse Rigel had ever seen. It folded its great wings and the rider dismounted. Making no effort to tether or hobble it, he came striding over to the group. Inhumanly tall, bizarrel
y emaciated, pale as a specter—Prince Vildiar was unmistakable. He stopped a few feet in front of them and frowned down at the corpse at their feet.

  “What happened here?”

  “Twenty-three people were murdered by some of your sons,” Talitha said.

  Vildiar looked thoughtfully at Rigel—as if analyzing the helmet or wondering whether it was the right time to bring up the subject of the two sons and a daughter who had been slain at his Front Street house—and then at the centaur, who held a feather close to his right eye and a steel arrowhead at his left thumb, the shaft between them pointing directly at the prince’s heart.

  “Order that idiot monstrosity to lower his bow, or I’ll kill him.”

  “Put it away, Menkent,” Talitha said.

  “Yes, Your Highness.” The centaur’s bow cracked like a gunshot, making Rigel jump. The sound was followed by a resounding thump as Markab the pegasus collapsed to the ground. “See that?” Menkent exulted. “Right through it! The arrow went right through its heart and out the other side.”

  Vildiar raised a hand…

  “No!” Talitha stepped between them. “There has been enough killing tonight. And you deserve it after what happened here. Where is my son?”

  “Our son,” said the giant in a withering tone. “The last I know of him was that you disobeyed the regent this morning and sent him back here to Spica. And before you start screaming, I assure you that I do not know where he is. I do not know who took him or killed the people here, and I did not order it.”

  Talitha said, “Ha! But if you find him in a dungeon at Phegda, you will return him to me at once, won’t you?”

  “No. I do not expect to find him at Phegda, and even if I do, I shall wait for a ruling from the throne. The regent was prepared to consider the question of custody in court this morning until your halfling started slaughtering sphinxes left and right. You are not well positioned to argue about massacres, my darling ex-consort.”

  “But now Queen Electra has returned! The game has changed, Prince.”