King of Swords (The Starfolk)

by Dave Duncan

  “I’m not exactly a halfling, am I?” he said. “I’m a three-quarterling! I met the Pythia last night, and she warned me not to try to kill Vildiar when I got the chance. He claimed that his magic was stronger Saiph, but the Pythia told me to be merciful and I think she meant that I’m more elf than human. She was telling me that I’d be subject to the guilt curse if I killed a starborn. I would have died like my mother just did.” Minotaurs, sphinxes, halflings, but never full-blooded elves.

  Wasat shrank back in alarm. “That’s quite possible! There have been cases of halflings succumbing to guilt. I wonder if any of them…” He turned to look at the enclosures where he kept the records.

  “Rigel!” Izar was standing in shallow water with his hands on his minuscule hips. “Rigel! Come on!”

  “The tyrant calls,” Rigel said. “Time to go, Dad.” They exchanged smiles. “I’d give you a loving hug, except I don’t want Izar to know about you. He’s a good imp, but it would slip out eventually.”

  “The hug can wait. Come back whenever you can get away, Son. I know I cannot hope for forgiveness for what happened in Winnipeg. The woman I had hired—”

  “If there was anything to forgive, it is forgiven,” Rigel said. He had been wrong in his initial reconstruction of the tragedy. The first-time father who had panicked and mislaid his baby had not been too young; he had been too old. “The main thing now is to cut Vildiar and his baboons down to size before they kill Talitha. And they’ll want to get me too.”

  “Four!” The statue barely had the word out before Adhafera Sphinx’s bellow rolled over the sand: “Halfling Rigel! You must come now!” He charged after it like a hungry lion.

  Rigel jumped up. “The queen?”

  Adhafera slid to a four-paw halt. “The queen is conferring with her senior officials. But Zozma wants you, urgently. Now! There is trouble.”

  Zozma could go chase his tail, as far as Rigel cared, but he didn’t dare explain how much this meeting with Wasat mattered to him.

  “I’ll be there in just a minute.” He waved for Izar to come join him. “Go and guard the door,” he said to the sphinx.

  “Just because you’re the old queen’s cub,” Adhafera growled, and then stalked away muttering, tail thrashing.

  Izar arrived, wet and angry. “You said—”

  “Yes, I’m sorry. We have to go. Halfling, Izar Starling was robbed of all his amulets yesterday. What you may not have heard yet was that he inflicted the worst defeat on the Vildiar gang it has ever suffered. He killed three of them and wounded a fourth, using a Lesath called Turais.”

  “A dog. A HUGE dog,” Izar explained, hands waving.

  Rigel nodded solemnly. “Enormous. I mention this to show that the starling, despite his youth, is mature enough and responsible enough to be trusted with the strongest defense you can find for him.” He might need it, and a new defender would be good for morale.

  “Dog?” Wasat muttered, rising stiffly from the bench. “I don’t have any serious dogs in stock at the moment, starling. How about a dragon?”

  “Dragon?” Izar’s eyes widened, and his ears twitched.

  “A small dragon. About unicorn size, but able to blow fire a fair distance.”

  “That would do!” Izar looked ready to melt with joy.

  “Then come with me, imp.”

  Rigel ran down to the pool for a quick dip. Dragons? Now he almost hoped that Hadar would take over the Izar file personally.

  Chapter 40

  My dragon’s name is Edasich,” Izar announced. He was riding on Kalb Sphinx’s back, which on any other day would be an epic honor, but it couldn’t compare with owning a dragon.

  “Should you say that?” Rigel gasped. His four-footed escorts were racing through the palace, and he was wearing himself out trying to keep up. He had earned this punishment by lingering too long in Miaplacidus. “Won’t that summon him?”

  “Not him, her. She’s a girl dragon, doesn’t have a pizzle. But saying her name won’t bring her. I have to stamp my foot too. This foot. That’s her, there.” His ears and fingers glittered with amulets, but he was pointing to the pride of his collection, a slender jade anklet on his twiggy left leg. “She’s a beautiful green color. I’ll show you later.”

  He would certainly have to show someone, and Rigel had brought that ordeal on himself. Then they turned a corner, and he caught a whiff of something terrible.

  The park was modest by palace standards, about half a hectare, and irregular in shape, with buildings on all sides, so it was overlooked by many windows and rooftop terraces. Among its lawns and flowers, fountains and trees of all shapes, a small crowd of gaping onlookers was being held back by more sphinxes, including the towering Zozma—sphinxes could not string yellow tape. Whatever they were guarding had the same foul stench as the dying Kornephoros.

  When they reached the spectators, Rigel told Kalb and Algenubi to stay behind and look after Izar. They obeyed without so much as a miaow.

  Praecipua opened a path for him through the crowd and led him around some shrubbery. The first corpse was a sphinx, whose neck and shoulders had already turned to black slime. The rear half of a red-feathered arrow lay beside it.

  The female starborn was on her back. Most of her chest had rotted away, and her coppery hair had lost its former luster. The male beside her had lost his face and head, but his death throes had rucked up his cotton gown to expose his shins, which were covered in blue fuzz.

  “The sphinx I do not know,” Rigel said, fighting nausea. “The others were Starborn Cheleb and Halfling Graffias. You knew that, didn’t you?”

  “Doesn’t hurt to have confirmation,” Zozma rumbled. “This venom smells like whatever killed the regent. Do you suppose they used their own blood to poison their… What’s wrong?”

  A lot was wrong, terribly wrong. The Family had silenced the informer before he could incriminate Vildiar. They had struck down a mage of red rank, which must be a considerable feat. Had they known she was a member of the Red Justice coven, or had she just been unlucky enough to be guarding their chosen target? But Zozma was not referring to those troubles. He was asking why Tweenling Rigel looked like that, and Rigel looked like that because Saiph was throbbing violently.

  “The killer’s still around! Somewhere…”

  Arrows? The sphinx had been shot from above. Rigel hastily scanned all the roofs and balconies all around the scene of the crime. “Izar! Get down! Kalb, cover him!”

  The sphinx dropped and rolled, spilling the imp onto the ground and then pinning him with a paw when he shouted protests and tried to rise. Algenubi stepped over him as a living shield. The wiser spectators began bolting for the exits.

  Satisfied that his charge was safe for the moment, Rigel resumed his survey of the windows and roofs. As he moved to peer around a palm tree, he was almost spun off his feet as Saiph struck aside an arrow that Rigel hadn’t even seen. Before he recovered his balance, a violent crash against his head hurled him sprawling to the grass. A second arrow had ricocheted off his helmet.

  The world was spinning… a silhouette on a high terrace… black against the blue summer sky… already nocking another arrow in his bow… Saiph was throbbing violently, useless because it could not strike against the enemy from this range.

  Spectators were fleeing, screaming in terror.

  Rigel scrambled to his knees, and, with a giddy lurch, forced himself upright. He hardly had to bother dodging and weaving to make himself a difficult target because he was staggering so much, but the arrows were probably cruise missiles, guided by magic, just like—

  He hurled one of the knives Wasat had given him the previous night. Knowing that it couldn’t possibly outrun an arrow, he ducked behind a palm tree and remembered to yell, “Meissa!” He was just in time, for the next arrow was already on its way. When it lost its target, it thudded into the tree instead of following him around the trunk and skewering him.

  Feeling safe again, he peered up in time to see Hadar’s
bow shatter when the knife knicked the highly stressed wood. The giant staggered, but the blade itself did not seem to reach his person—magic against magic. Before Rigel could send a second missile, the halfling flipped him a finger in mocking salute: Get you next time! He turned and disappeared from view.

  “Close off the treasury portal!” Zozma bellowed, but half his squad was already streaming away across the park. They would never catch Hadar. There would be no peace or safety in the Starlands until Vildiar was dead or crowned.

  “Rigel!” Izar said, grabbing him with both arms. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes, I’m fine,” Rigel lied. “But now we need to go somewhere, don’t we, Commander Zozma?”

  The safe house was named Nihal, and it was more calendar art—rambling fieldstone buildings with red tile roofs and walls draped in creepers nestled in among vines and fruit trees, both laden with fruit that had to be impossibly out of season. Everywhere, there were glimpses of distant hedges, trails, gates, livestock, and bonny hillsides, all of it much more skillfully rendered than Starborn Muphrid’s crude efforts to depict scenery at Alrisha.

  Nihal’s managers, mudlings Marius and Olga, had produced a sumptuous spread in an enormous farmhouse kitchen. While Izar and his bodyguard gobbled everything within reach, Marius introduced them to eight or nine halfling imps—carefully explaining that Nihal doubled as an orphanage—and even more human children, who were the offspring of the human staff. Izar’s eyes gleamed at the exciting prospect of bullying this new army into shape.

  Nihal, Marius explained, also boasted hills, caves, creepy woods, hollow trees, a millpond with boats, a working smithy, a waterwheel, and two herds of unicorns—all stuff that would provide ample entertainment for an enterprising imp. To Izar, there was no time like the present. Indeed there was no time but the present.

  Rigel groaned. “I need to digest.”

  The imp eyed him menacingly. “You said I could introduce you to Edasich!”

  Rigel thought Stars forbid! and wondered how in the galaxy he could persuade his young ward that it was nap time. Izar was well rested, but Rigel felt like he hadn’t slept in a year. Starborn Fomalhaut walked in, acknowledged the imp’s and halfling’s bows with a nod, and took a seat opposite them. He waved Olga away when she started to fuss over him.

  “Turais…” Izar began.

  “I heard he served you well, starling,” the mage said and his golden eyes shone like twin summer suns.

  The imp nodded vigorously. “I gotta… got another Lesath from an old halfling in the palace!”

  “So I heard. I’d like to see that. Commander Zozma,” Fomalhaut told Rigel, “has secured Nihal with two prides of sphinxes and a wing of griffins, and I have set the necessary occult bars on the portal. It should be quite safe for Izar Starling to do some exploring.”

  Izar actually remembered to look for Rigel’s nod of approval before he launched himself out the door into an unsuspecting landscape. Bodyguard and mage were left alone, regarding each other in thoughtful silence over a table of dirty dishes, neither of them willing to try for first blood. The mage’s eyes looked like chips of amber still cold from the Pleistocene.

  Having the shorter life expectancy, Rigel spoke first. “You can see the future?”

  The mage’s smile would have frozen gasoline. “No. But I do get strong hunches. Yesterday morning something told me that the imp might find good use for a Lesath in the near future. I could be sent to the Dark Cells for giving him one.”

  “Legally so, but who would execute the warrant?”

  Fomalhaut’s second smile was more sincere. “Good question. But it is a good law. Today Hadar Halfling slew Cheleb Mage, our oldest and wisest mage. His father must have given him amulets far in excess of what the law allows.”

  He still had not introduced a topic for debate, but Rigel had a long list of questions waiting for him. Perhaps that was the agenda—it was payback time, be-nice-to-the-royal-half-breed time.

  “My mother told me that you came to our rescue in the Walmart store because you were seancing Tarf. She also said that Tarf and co. had been seancing me from the Starlands for a while. I led them to her, and Tarf extroverted to deliver the Cujam.” Electra had been talking obvious rubbish.

  Fomalhaut pouted as if he had expected strawberry and tasted lemon. “Yes, your mother. A remarkable ruler, but nothing else in her reign will be remembered like that thunderbolt she dropped in the Great Court today. A royal halfling?” Fomalhaut sighed. “It is obscene! Earth decays and corrupts us also. But I grant you that you are a more tolerable depravity than Vildiar’s litter, and a juvenile on the throne is less odious than that brainsick beanstalk would be, so you will have my assistance.”

  “I am honored and relieved, my lord. Just you or all of Red Justice?”

  A long and deadly silence. “Red what?”

  “My mother told me about Red Justice, starborn.”

  Fomalhaut nodded, thin-lipped. “She truly had diminished. That must have been just before Kornephoros died, so she may have been feeling the guilt curse even then.

  “I cannot promise for the rest of our group. Some of them are so appalled by these events that they have faded. Whether they will ever return, I cannot say, and we are all sick at the thought of a publicly acknowledged royal halfling. But I will see what I can do to enlist their help as well.”

  “Thank you. In what ways?”

  “To guard the queen and her son, our only other Naos. You will necessarily be involved. The scandal about you and Talitha is already spreading. Today Her Majesty’s senior advisors repeatedly urged her to put you away as an abomination. She blistered their ears, and my vocabulary is not entirely metaphorical. She appointed you Marshal of Canopus, which gives you authority over the entire palace guard and stars know what else—you, a halfling fresh out of the wild! Four councilors faded at the thought.”

  “Will the collar match my eyes?”

  The starborn flashed fury. “I do not recall; the office has been vacant for centuries.”

  “So my main job will be to assassinate Vildiar?”

  “I did not say that!”

  “Of course you didn’t, but can Talitha ever be safe while he lives?”

  Silence.

  Rigel persisted. “Is there anyone else who can deal with him? And I do mean kill him.”

  Glaring, Fomalhaut shook his head. Evidently that was as far as he would go. But Rigel was officially a halfling, and Rigel had Saiph. After what had happened at Giauzar, it was doubtful that even Saiph could prevail against Naos Vildiar, but it was still the best chance anybody had. No one could force the prince into a Dark Cell. There was only one solution—and the guilt curse might kill a three-quarterling.

  “You have not explained, my lord, how you turned up so opportunely to rescue Electra and myself when Tarf set the earthlings on us.”

  The mage clicked his shark teeth a few times. “We—Red Justice—knew that the Family was tracking several halflings. That is another illegality, as halflings are supposed to be rescued, not trolled as bait for a conscience-driven lost queen. When Tarf suddenly extroverted, I was able to follow.”

  “How? I mean how did you know? I understood that seancing was done in the Starlands to observe events on Earth. You are able to spy on people here with it?”

  “No. That is not possible.”

  Rigel smiled triumphantly, just to annoy the old sourpuss. “So you were tipped off! You have penetrated the Family. Some member of Red Justice can dissemble as one of Vildiar’s halflings?”

  The mage flushed with anger at Rigel’s line of questioning. “That might be possible transiently, but it would be insanely dangerous. If you need lessons in how magic works, halfling, I suggest you ask Starling Izar.”

  Rigel ignored the jab. “Then you have an agent in the Family? A servant? Or have you managed to turn one of Vildiar’s own children?”

  Fomalhaut showed his dagger teeth again, but not in a smile. “Domestic halflings
are bad enough. I had forgotten how obnoxious they could be when reared in the wild. What Red Justice does is no business of yours, tweenling.”

  “With respect, my lord, it is very much my business.” Rigel braced for trouble. “You moved the queen and me to Alrisha, and the next day somebody tried to murder us there. As Izar’s bodyguard and Marshal of Canopus, I need to know whether you are a traitor, Starborn Fomalhaut!”

  The mage drummed his fingers furiously on the table and drew a deep breath. His golden eyes burned. “In a thousand years, I have never apologized to a halfling or even dreamed of doing so. I apologize to you now, Marshal. Your inquiry is justifiable. Yes, we had an informer inside the Family. His name was Graffias. You were extremely fortunate to run into him and not one of his brethren when you raided Giauzar this morning. But then you went and enlisted his aid, and he was slain, ending his usefulness to us.”

  “No.” Rigel thought back to the confrontations at Giauzar. “No, they had fingered him already. They knew. His father was anxious for him not to escape.” Poor Graffias! “I suppose he tried to defect and asked for protection, but you and your mage buddies sent him back to be your spy?”

  Angry silence. Fomalhaut was not going to admit to making a mistake.

  Rigel said, “So Graffias reported that the Family was seancing me, and you started doing the same.” How long had he been the box office hit of the Starlands? “Then Electra entered my life posing as Mira. Did you recognize the queen despite her dissembling, or did you just guess who she was?”

  Glowering, the mage ground out the words. “We suspected. The next morning, when Tarf started the riot in that marketplace, the Cujam amulet did not affect her, so I knew that she was not human. I moved her to safety at Alrisha because it is a seedy, disreputable dive, not the sort of place anyone would look for her. I also knew that Talitha was visiting there incognito. Talitha had great trouble recovering from her enforced pairing to Vildiar, although she was being excessively stupid in hoping to find a reliable companion in a place like Alrisha. Electra would see through her dissembling, and if she needed help, I knew she would find it from Talitha. You, I did not care about.”