Blood of Ambrose

by James Enge

  “I watched him win the Tournament of Zaakharien three years ago. He stood aside until all the members of his side had been struck down. Then he killed the members of the other side, one by one. The wounds he took that day! His surcoat was red all through, and his armor looked as if it were enameled; it was after that he came to be called the Red Knight. It was horrible and wonderful and a little boring, to tell the truth. You found yourself yawning as he struck off another knight's helmet. Then you saw the blood seeping into the dust and you remembered: that was a man, that was a man's head in there. But enough of that….”

  “Do you really think someone has arisen who will challenge the Red Knight?”

  Genjandro ran his fingers through his beard and looked thoughtful. “Nobody believes it,” he admitted. “Although a token of challenge was given: they found a lance with black pennons thrust into the Lonegate of Ambrose.”

  Wyrth expressed some surprise at this, though he felt none. (He had, in fact, placed the lance there himself.) “Then you think…”

  “Witchcraft!” Genjandro said, nodding. “They say there's no limit to what Ambrosia can do. Somehow she worked it, to put a snake in the Protector's chamber pot.”

  “And did it?”

  “They say he pulled the lance from the gate with his own hands and broke it. Then he took the pieces to her and threw them at her feet. And they say the old bitch just sat there with her hands folded. And smiled, you know. She's brave and bad, that one.”

  “An age will end if she dies, sure.”

  “It's because it is ending that she will die,” Genjandro disputed.

  “But if she's as powerful as you say…”

  “Her charms aren't powerful enough to stop Hlosian. She can't whistle up a champion from nowhere. I'm not saying she has no supporters, but none will dare to challenge the Red Knight.”

  “Then why the trial at all?”

  “She claimed the right; the token appeared. In law, he cannot deny her. And, frankly, I doubt he wishes to. It is a great show, as you say. And if no champion appears, it will hardly be less. They will burn her at the stake.”

  “Hmph,” said the dwarf. “Yet they used to say, in my youth, that the Ambrosii could not be slain by fire. It was supposed to go with the unnaturally long life and the, er, uneven shoulders.”

  The rug merchant smiled and stroked his beard. “Of course! The clearest proof of witchcraft. Then Urdhven will boldly have someone lop her head off, and the audience will go home with a sound moral lesson.”

  “Ah. What is that, exactly?”

  “No doubt we will be required to learn it by rote before we depart,” said Genjandro, no longer troubling to conceal his distaste.

  “Well, it sounds most interesting to me. Politics in action, as it were. And you say your attendance has been, er, requested.”

  “Required. I would gladly send you in my place.”

  Wyrtheorn laughed and said, “If only it were possible! But let's talk of other things.”

  Genjandro the rug merchant duly made his appearance the next day at the tournament enclosure of Gravesend Field, three miles east of the city walls. He was greeted by a captain of the soldiers whom he happened to know, one Lorn, who was glumly marking an attendance roll.

  “Genjandro, good day! I am glad I can strike you off the list of our Protector's enemies.”

  “That list will be much shorter after today,” Genjandro said, stroking his beard.

  “It will be at least one name shorter, Genjandro—like the imperial family tree.”

  Genjandro scented a political conversation in the offing, something he particularly wanted to avoid at the moment. He nodded vacantly and would have led his horse through into the enclosure.

  Lorn stopped him. “Genjandro! Have you heard the prophecy that Ambrosia and the last descendant of Uthar the Great will die in the same year?”

  “I had not heard that prophecy.”

  “It is a very recent one.”

  “Lorn, I am here from necessity, no other reason.”

  “And I likewise. Nor do I really care what happens to an old witch who has already lived too long.”

  “Of course not.”

  “But Ambrosia was always the merchant's friend. We…One would have hoped they would show more loyalty.”

  “Ambrosia had her supporters among the army, did she not? She led them to victory many a time. Yet there is a prophecy, a very recent prophecy, that she is destined to die without a single armed champion.” The rug merchant glanced pointedly at the sword swinging from the other's belt. “Had you heard that saying, Lorn?”

  The soldier looked straight at him. “Yes. Now is not the time or the place. But the King, Genjandro. If the King were—”

  The rug merchant turned on him in fury. “Your ‘times' and your ‘places'! Go back to your lists, Lorn. The Protector's Man will be along for them, presently.”

  The soldier stood back, obscure emotions twisting his face. The rug merchant limped past, leading his horse off to the stables. He paid three silver coins for a separate stall without comment, though several occurred to him. He insisted on tending to his mount himself, saving himself a silver coin or two more, and the stable boy left him alone in the stall.

  “Three fingers of silver to keep a horse for half a day!” he complained to the animal.

  “Someone has to pay for this kind of circus, Genjandro,” the horse replied. “Be glad it wasn't three fingers off your hand. Money can be lost and gotten again.”

  Genjandro grunted. He watched with horrified interest as the horse yawned wide, the jaws split, the whole front opened up, and the dwarf Wyrtheorn stepped out. Afterward the simulacrum of a horse re-formed itself and casually lumbered off to the far end of the stall, where there was a pile of hay.

  “That's not a very dwarvish philosophy,” Genjandro observed, to cover up his dread.

  “How would you know?” the dwarf countered. He tossed Genjandro a leather bag that sang with coins. “For your trouble, my friend. We had better leave separately—and I advise you not to recognize me if we meet outside. However, I'll remember your help. Good fortune.”

  “What are you planning to do?” Genjandro asked, pausing at the door of the stall.

  The dwarf grinned deep in his gray-flecked brown beard. “Something very like treason, if I were you, my friend.”

  The Ontilian took the hint and left with a curt nod. The dwarf spent a few moments unweaving the “horse” and stowing it in his pockets, and then strolled out himself. The day's light was already strong and hot, and the carnival air of the enclosure was thick with dust and the anticipation of death.

  Hlosian Bekh, the Red Knight, lay on a table, his gray flesh cold and lifeless, as the Lord Protector and Steng, his chief poisoner, argued over him.

  “Still: make the golem stronger,” the Protector was saying. “If he does appear—”

  “It hardly matters, my lord,” the poisoner replied with deferential soothing contempt. “If the Crooked Man (assuming there is such a person) turns up, he will be subject to the same limitations as any other challenger. The law is clear. Magic is forbidden at the trial by combat; its use compels the user's side to forfeit.”

  “But we are using it,” the Protector pointed out.

  The chief poisoner smiled as he wondered whether stupidity was an inevitable consequence of hereditary power. After all, had any of the descendants of Uthar the Great and Ambrosia really matched the ferocious supple intelligence of their forbears? And, though Urdhven was Protector merely by virtue of his late sister's marriage with the late Emperor, his ancestors had been warlords on the northern plains before the Vraidish tribes broke through the Kirach Kund to conquer the lands of the south and found the Second Ontilian Empire on the ruins of the First. “We may safely break the law,” the poisoner explained, “since we enforce it. The Crooked Man must come, if he does, with ordinary sword and shield to kill our champion. And that he cannot do, since Hlosian cannot die.”

 
; “Nevertheless,” said the Protector, returning to the point at issue, “make him stronger.”

  Steng stood motionless for a moment or two. He realized that the question was no longer Hlosian's strength, but the Protector's. And the poisoner was forced to admit to himself that the Protector would have his way, no matter what the cost. Perhaps that was what made his power more than merely hereditary.

  The poisoner turned away to his worktable, where the golem's life-scroll lay. Taking up his pen, he dipped it in a jar of human blood and added a number of flourishes to the already-dried dark brown script.

  “These are intensifiers,” he explained over his shoulder to Urdhven. “They focus the pseudo-talic impulses—”

  The nobleman waved him silent with imperious distaste. “I don't wish to know about it. Just do it properly.”

  The poisoner finished his task in silence. When the new figures had dried, he rolled up the scroll and sealed it with wax (tinted with blood). He turned back to the prone form of Hlosian and placed the scroll in the gaping hole in its back. He drew to him several bowls of red mud and clay and began to trowel it into the breach between the Red Knight's shoulders. He worked steadily, pausing only to inscribe certain secret signs in the drying clay with a peculiar pointed stylus. Finally he was done. He spoke a secret word, and the stench of cold blood grew hot and dense in the workroom.

  “Hlosian arise!” Steng cried.

  The golem rose from the table and stood before them.

  “Hlosian Bekh,” the poisoner said, “seize yonder stone—yes, the one I have marked—seize it from the wall and crush it.”

  The golem roared and swept the table out of its way. In ten breaths the stone was smoking rubble at the Protector's feet.

  “Hlosian,” the poisoner asked, “what is your purpose?”‘

  “I will kill the witch's champion.”

  “Why?”

  “The witch Ambrosia must die.”

  The poisoner glanced at the Protector, who had hardly moved as his monster performed for him.

  “You've done well,” the Protector said.

  “Thank you, my lord.”

  “Arm him and bring him to the enclosure.”

  “His squire will arm him, my Lord Protector. There will be less talk that way.”

  The Protector nodded in agreement.

  They walked together into the corridor and, by some peculiar mischance, they encountered Ambrosia as she was being escorted up from the dungeon in the green robe of an appellant.

  “What's this? What's this?” cried Ambrosia, as genially as if she were still preeminent in the empire, as if the death-house watch were an honor guard. She carried the chains on her broken wrists like royal jewelry. “Protector, poisoner, and champion—celebrating your victory in advance, I take it. That's always safest, isn't it?”

  “Take the prisoner out to the field,” the Protector said, his voice as flat and expressionless as his face had become.

  But Ambrosia braced her feet and lifted her limp, swollen hands. “Urdhven, you don't look as triumphant as you did a moment ago. Perhaps it's come into your mind that if you hadn't had my hands broken, I'd be riding as my own champion today—and yours would be nothing but a breathing dead man.

  “Speaking of breathing,” she continued, “what's that reek I smell? Is it mud or blood—or is it both? It is both, isn't it, Steng, you dog? I see the clay under your fingernails.”

  Ambrosia laughed engagingly, as if they were all parties to some slightly disreputable secret. She leaned confidingly toward the poisoner, who was blushing a deep unpleasant shade of maroon. “But surely,” she remarked, in a low but audible tone, “surely, Steng, you must know that when we were young, my brother's and my favorite hobby was killing golems. We killed them with fire, we killed them with water. We killed them with words—an easy thing to do, Steng, for a golem's life is simply words, magical words inscribed on a name-scroll, which other words can interrupt and make meaningless. Did you think you could defeat Morlock Dragonkiller with a golem?”

  “Take her away!” the Protector said, white-lipped with anger or fear.

  “Better yet,” Ambrosia continued, as if Urdhven had not spoken, “suppose I simply pointed at this thing out on the field and cried: ‘Golem! The Protector's champion is a golem!' For it strikes me that the Protector is guilty of trying to harm my champion by magic—the legal definition of witchcraft. A capital offense, I believe. You might be burned at the stake, my Lord Protector.”

  “A witch's lies mean nothing,” the Protector said mechanically. “But she might utter spells to twist men's minds. Therefore—gag her, soldiers. Do it now. See that her mouth is bound throughout the ceremony.”

  “The trial, my Lord Protector,” Ambrosia said, as the guards tore away the hem of her robe.

  “The execution, my Lady Ambrosia,” the Protector retorted as they knotted the gag tight across her mouth. She made no attempt to reply, but her eyes were bright with vengeful triumph as she was led away.

  “If she had not spoken now, who knows what might have happened?” the Protector muttered to Steng. “Ambrosia's temper was always quicker than her wit.”

  Steng looked at him almost pityingly. “The chances that any would have heard her on the field were small, and who would have dared believe her?”

  “But—”

  “She spoke for the guards,” Steng said gently.

  “Ah. I see.”

  “They will remember. They will talk. They saw you were afraid to have the story spread—”

  “I said, ‘I see.’ Have your people take care of them, Steng. Make it look natural.”

  “Yes, my Lord Protector.”

  There was a brief silence. Then out of his own thoughts, the Protector said accusingly, “And you blushed.”

  “Ambrosia is my better, my lord.”

  “She is not mine,” Urdhven snarled. “I have beaten her, point by point, and today she dies.”

  “Let the fire of death cleanse the world of this witch's evil,” the King said, in a clear, firm voice.

  “Excellent, Sire,” applauded Kedlidor, the Rite-Master of Ambrose. “That should be audible for quite a distance, even in the tournament enclosure. The Protector's Men will conduct any further ceremonies attendant on the execution of the sentence. You may properly depart at any point after the inarguable death of the witch—there is no formal close of the ceremony, any more than there is an end to death itself.

  “Now,” Kedlidor continued, “should Ambrosia's champion vindicate her—”

  “What chance is there of that?” cried the King despairingly.

  The withered old man, the only one of the family servants spared in the recent purge, focused his dim gray eyes on his King. “That is of no concern to me, Sire. I am not a gambler, but the Rite-Master of Ambrose. I am charged with knowing and teaching the proper ceremonies for every possible occasion. The Lady Ambrosia's acquittal is a possible occasion; therefore I will teach you the proper ceremony.”

  The King stared sullenly at the floor of the room. The Rite-Master dispassionately struck him across the face. “Attend, Sire. Say—”

  “I know all that stuff,” muttered the King, and he did. He had spent the night reading the ritual book, wondering whether he would be more relieved by Grandmother's acquittal or her death.

  “Show me that you know, Sire. Take a breath, speak loudly and clearly…”

  There was the thunder of booted feet in the hallway outside and the door flew open. The King's uncle, Lord Urdhven, was there with a troop of men wearing his personal device, a red lion standing against a black field. Behind Urdhven was the poisoner Steng. He met the King's eye and smiled gently.

  “It's nearly noon,” the Protector remarked. “Bring his Majesty, Kedlidor.” He turned to go.

  “No, Lord Urdhven,” Kedlidor replied.

  The Protector, resplendent in gold armor, enamelled with his own black-and-scarlet device on the breastplate, paused and smiled ominously down at the
gray shadow of a man. “Why not?”

  “It is not fit that I be seen with the King at this ceremony. My rank is too low. Further, your poisoner may not be there.”

  “He won't be. Is there anything else?”

  “Yes. The King ought to precede you. He is of higher rank, you know.”

  The Protector turned his red smile on his nephew. “I do know it. Naturally, Sire, you must go first. All the forms will be met for this ceremony.”

  The King walked past the Protector and the poisoner into the hall of armed men. They fell in behind him, the sound of their feet in the hallway like a stone giant gnashing its teeth. He passed out into the golden light of the enclosure, and there was a unanimous shout from the crowd as the royal procession was recognized. There were soldiers before him, clearing a path, so he didn't have to decide what was the right way to go. While seeming to protect him, they took him to the wooden stair that led to the royal box, above the Victor's Square, at the midpoint of the lists.

  Already the stands of benches on either side were crowded with spectators. The King had never been to a formal combat before, and he was amazed at the mixture of somberness and hilarity among the onlookers. He seated himself amid dutiful cheers, which sounded louder and more impassioned—even hysterical—as Lord Urdhven the Protector appeared and took his place at the King's left hand.

  Opposite the stands stood the prisoner, chained to a stake, her mouth bound with a green rag torn from her appellant's robe. Beyond her was nothing but the dead lands between the two cities that bore the name Ontil. Somewhere beyond the gray hills was the Old City, capital of the First Empire. No one lived there now—it was under the curse of the Old Gods; even the river Tilion had been diverted when the New City was founded by Uthar the Great and Ambrosia centuries ago. But, in name, Lathmar was King of that city too. He had often daydreamed of escaping from the New City to the Old City, where he would find his true subjects and make war on the people who had killed his mother and his father.…

  At a curt gesture from the Protector, the heralds blew on their trumpets, shattering the King's reverie. Vost, the High Marshal (since the recent execution of the one appointed by the King's late father), stood forth in the Victor's Square and cried the challenge.