Delia of Vallia

by Alan Burt Akers

  “We can do nothing, majestrix, nothing.”

  “You can, Agron the Needle! You can alleviate their pain.”

  Agron’s leather wallet shook as he reached in to fetch out fresh acupuncture needles. In the cunning Kregen way he could insert a needle and twirl it and banish pain. He could not halt the onset or the course of the disease.

  One of the churches, the structure of crumbly brick dedicated to Flamdelka the Gatherer, commandeered as an emergency hospital, was crammed with sufferers. Flamdelka the Gatherer was one of the older spirits of this part of Vallia, only half-believed in by most folk, still worshipped by many whose business took them across the Ochre Limits.

  Dalki walked his totrix up slowly and dismounted. He, like everyone else, looked exhausted.

  “My lady. My father bids me to remind you that you promised to rest now—”

  “Yes, Dalki. Later.” Delia pointed up. “Look, Dalki. A warvol flying over, looking for food.”

  The black wings spiraled over the church of Flamdelka. Dead bodies were being carried out and placed in carts. The smell did not offend the warvol. He was a kind of vulture, not nicknamed Rippasch, and he was hungry.

  “Very good, my lady,” said Dalki, and lifted his bow.

  Agron the Needle nodded. He did not know how the disease was communicated. But if the warvol fed on a dead person and flew away — who knew where he might go and who knew where he might carry the disease? If he did at all.

  Dalki loosed. The shaft pierced the shining black feathers. Without a cry, the warvol pitched onto the roof of Mother Hansi’s Banje Store, and fell plump into the street. The corpse would be thrown onto the pyres along with the other corpses.

  If she was honest with herself, Delia felt she ought to admit that some venom for Rippasch impelled her in that deed. The warvol, like Rippasch, cleaned up dead bodies, prevented the kind of disease under which they now suffered. But, in stripping an already diseased corpse, the bird might spread the contagion. Of course, it could be spread on the air, by the skin, through tears... No one knew.

  She was persuaded to rest only by the consideration that if she collapsed then she would only be hindering the efforts of the others. Out of pride could come blind selfishness.

  “My lady?”

  “Yes, Dalki. I will rest.”

  Walking slowly back along Fruiterer’s Street and so across the dusty square of Palm Kyro, she could feel the way her legs ached. Her back ached, too; but in a different way. Dalki, tight-lipped that the queen had chosen to walk back to the strom’s grand villa instead of riding, walked a few paces in rear, leading his animal. His father had no need of dinning into his ears every few hours the sobering thought of how lucky they both were in being able to attend on the queen. As a Djang and a Vallian, Dalki needed his queen and his empress, and he was perfectly well aware of his good fortune.

  There were no airboats in Mellinsmot. Most of those in private hands had been used by their owners to fly away to safety. There were very few of those. The strom’s two fliers, of which he had been inordinately proud, had been commandeered by the soldiers and the mercenaries had robbed him, taken off in his airboats, and not even wished him a remberee. The black fliers used by a local Company of Friends to ship in ice had likewise all been seized. Delia was informed that in four days’ time a flier might be expected bringing ice. In that time those sufferers whose temperatures rose too high would die.

  Stromni Elspa wanted to fuss. Delia was brisk with the woman; not unkind. At last she could stretch out in the bed in the room they had placed at her disposal. Either Tandu or Dalki, or both, would remain just outside the door and not even an earthquake would shift them.

  She thought of the poor people of Mellinsmot, of Opaz, of her friends, of her children and of her husband. Then she went to sleep. She awoke early, washed and dressed, ate a huge breakfast, and stuck straight into tending for the sick, of caring and cleaning, of soothing and swabbing. The routine established itself. Until fresh cases ceased, the routine would continue.

  As for herself, she had no fears. She was concerned for her two Djangs, and kept them away from any too close contacts with diseased victims. If the damage was not already done, they might escape. Not everyone caught the Affliction of the Sores of Combabbry. The stench hung over the town. She had bathed in the Sacred Pool in far Aphrasöe. That had conferred upon her a miraculous ability to recover rapidly from wounds and to resist infections. No, she had no fears for herself, and in this knew she cheated. Naturally, this made her take on greater burdens, exposing herself recklessly. In turn, this distressed her friends. It was all a mix and extraordinarily difficult to find the correct path of conduct.

  On the day when the airboat bringing the ice arrived only ten people were so close to dying that the ice would make no difference. The three days of sores and the three days of temperature rise followed by a decline to death had already spelled destruction for too many souls. Now, the ice would make all the difference.

  Even then, Tandu and Dalki with a couple of the strom’s retainers only just managed to hold onto the airboat and persuade the crew to land. The smell warned them. Dalki, in particular, was most fierce.

  He waved his sword under the nose of the skipper of the airboat.

  “Put this voller back down, dom! Or you’ll grin from a mouth under your chin!”

  “It is death—” The skipper, a fat and jowly man, quivered and sweated.

  “For you — yes! Down!”

  The voller landed and at once the ice was unloaded.

  Delia said to Tandu: “Your son cuts a fine figure, Tandu. When all this is settled, what will you two do?”

  “Why, my lady, go back to guard duty, I suppose.”

  “We shall see. The emperor has need of good friends. I think a place will be found for you — if you so choose.”

  “I would choose so, my lady.”

  “Good. And Dalki shall be a Deldar at once.”

  Tandu beamed. The ice smoked as it was hurried away covered in sacking. “That pleases me, my lady. I give you thanks—”

  “Of course, one cannot really have a son outranking his father. It is known. But, in this, I think you will have to be a Hikdar. I can see no other course.”

  “My lady!”

  Delia turned away abruptly. Often and often she had discussed this thorny problem with her husband. How easy to dish out ranks and titles! How much pleasure it gave to reward good friends! And how selfish it was, giving of honor and seeing how easy it was, and taking the pleasure. Tandu was pleased and Dalki would be pleased and she was pleased so where was the error? Yet she worried over this as she knew her husband worried, also.

  With the coming of the ice a crisis point was passed. From that moment no more people who could be saved died. And, significantly, there were no more outbreaks. Those men and women who had remained to fight the disease and care for the sick ceased to be stricken in their turn.

  That evening by the light of a samphron oil lamp, Delia composed the necessary letter.

  It was brief, said all that was appropriate, expressed regrets that she had unavoidably missed the wedding of her half-brother Vomanus. Early next morning she sent off the ice flier with the letter, charged strictly to fly at once to Delka Ob and seek audience of the kov. Her seal, stamped across the ribbons fastening the letter, would be proof enough of the importance of the errand of uncouth icemen.

  She could not leave yet. There were still sufferers to be tended. Two days later a voller flew in. A girl dressed in leathers stepped down, the rapier swinging at her side, her face bright and eager, her color up, her head high.

  “Majestrix!” she said, advancing with her lithe step. Then, in a softer tone, she said, “May Dee-Sheon have you in her keeping.”

  “Yzobel!” said Delia.

  “This is a dreadful place. You are safe?”

  “Perfectly. And happy to see you.”

  Yzobel wore white leathers. Her body complemented the beauty of her face. Y
et her rapier and main gauche that hung from silver lockets were practical, hard weapons. This was a girl who could turn her hand to fighting as well as nursing. In that, she mirrored others like her.

  Walking with Yzobel into the shade and already looking forward to a glass of parclear, a plate of miscils and palines, and a good chat, Delia was not surprised that Yzobel had arrived. Once the ice-flier had reached Delka Ob, the disappearance of the empress would be explained. One of the sisters, at least, would be immediately sent.

  “I came on ahead,” said Yzobel. “The others will be here very soon. They were gathering medicaments. But I have a message, majestrix.”

  “Oh?”

  “The mistress wishes to see you. You are summoned to Lancival. We should leave at once.”

  “Of course,” said Delia, Empress of Vallia, Sister of the Rose. “I am ready. Let us go now.”

  Chapter five

  Lancival

  “Returning to Lancival is like feeling your mother’s arms enfolding you.” So had said a long-dead sister, and despite the sentimentality of that, Delia admitted its truth. Other sisters had said similar sentiments. Delia likened the feeling of going back to Lancival to resting her head on her mother’s breast. This Delia regarded as sickly sentimentality — and, also, admitted of its truth. Her own mother had died when she was young, a tragedy she believed she had surmounted.

  Lancival. Lancival of the red roofs and the ivy-clad walls. Lancival of the calmness and the peace, the singing and the quietness and the harsh banging of steel on steel and the panting exertions of girls in combat. Lancival of the Disciplines known only to women. Lancival of the Whip. Lancival of the Claw.

  Not because she was the Empress of Vallia, but because she was an initiate of the SoR of a certain exaltedness, Delia possessed her own room in one of the collegiate buildings. A mere cubbyhole, it contained a narrow bed, a set of bookshelves, a dressing table with brushes and combs of plain wood and bristle unadorned and decorated with not a single stroke from a paintbrush, a single design from a chisel. A wardrobe held various robes required by the Order, a selection of undergarments of the most Spartan kind, sandals and fighting boots, a cloak and an enveloping black leather hat with a black band. The sheets were plain yellow, the pillowslip plain yellow, the towels draped over the washbasin plain yellow. The mirror set above the dressing table was not quite large enough to reflect all of her face at the same time. She was adept at tilting her proud and imperious head about, like a gawky girl, to see what was necessary to see.

  This room was one of a double row along a third-story corridor, each cubbyhole like its neighbor as a pea in a pod. This particular room had once been occupied by a sister of the SoR, now long dead, renowned in the sorority’s annals as Velda the Tempestuous.

  The stories clustered about Velda emphasized the usual normality of her character, even her sweetness of personality. The stories told those who listened that when Velda met injustice she could not control her temper. Her temper was fierce, vicious, intemperate. A mistress of the Claw and Whip, no accurate tally had been kept of the unseemly wights she had dispatched to the Ice Floes of Sicce, she clawed and slashed them all indifferently if they offended her keen sense of justice.

  This room was, therefore, always known as Velda’s Room.

  Just why the mistress had seen fit to assign Velda’s Room to Delia of Delphond puzzled Delia. Now, she no longer concerned herself over that order of puzzlement. The room represented a haven at certain times, a sense of penitence, a place where she might strip away everything that was not Delia.

  She was always glad and relieved to sink down on the narrow bed in her room at Lancival, and always ready and relieved to close the door upon that room and leave to go about her business in the wider world.

  High on one wall hung a portrait of Velda the Tempestuous. It showed her in the full regalia of white leathers, long-legged, scowling of face, the Whip coiled along her arm, the Claw extended menacingly. Her rapier and left-hand dagger snugged about a narrow waist. Her hips flared in her arrogant, menacing pose. Her long white leather boots were mud-splashed. This small touch had always to Delia brought the image of Velda alive, as though the sister could not be dead but ready to answer the summons to prayer, to be met in the refectory, to be engaged in discussion at any of the formal functions of the SoR.

  The Sisters of the Rose were mindful of tradition, and looked to the future, and kept themselves secret in the world in which they labored.

  Beside the head of the bed stood a heavy wooden chest on legs which, in that austere room, were incongruously carved into the likenesses of rose trellises. The doors in the front of the chest were locked. The top supported a few essential items of toiletries.

  Now Delia took off her raggedy russets and threw them into the wicker basket by the door. Novices would collect the laundry by rota, and wash and repair her clothes. Once, she had labored on those duties here.

  She went to the end picture of the row that hung beneath the portrait of Velda. Before she opened the picture on its hinge away from the wall, she stood, brooding on the line of portraits. Each was mounted in a narrow plain frame of varnished wood. There were fifteen. As always, she gazed at the face tenth along. That frame, like the first six, was surmounted by a small nosegay, a posy, of roses carved and painted. The face looked back with its brown Vallian eyes, gentle, sweet, stunningly beautiful. Delia sighed.

  Life was brutal.

  You tried. You attempted to make what you could of this puzzle Opaz had given you. Yes, her grandparents, represented in the first four portraits, were dead, and it was seemly that after full lives of better than two hundred years, they should be gathered into the Benediction of Opaz the Everlasting. And her father and mother; death had claimed them. As for the seventh portrait — a little frown dented Delia’s forehead. She’d left him after the Battle of the Incendiary Vosks in Hamal, unwillingly, but committed. No doubt he was off swinging his damned great Krozair longsword and adventuring in places she would rather not hear about until afterward.

  As for her son Drak, in the next picture, he was being groomed to become the Emperor of Vallia and take over from his father. When he did so, Delia fully intended to speak rather intemperately to the mistress, and demand that she be allowed to join her husband in whatever nefarious goings on he was up to. They owed her that much, the SoR, surely?

  She held the first picture open, still pondering.

  The picture after Drak’s showed Lela who was known as Jaezila. Soon there would have to be a further portrait placed below that, a picture of Prince Tyfar of Hamal. And the quicker those two decided to marry the better and so put every one of their friends out of their tantalizing frustrations at the idiocy of two young lovers.

  And so to the tenth portrait.

  Below it, almost a part of it, had been fixed a much smaller portrait, practically a miniature. This showed a man with black curly hair bunched on his head, with a hawklike face, bold and arrogant, with two blue bolts for eyes. His chin was like the ram of a swifter. Delia had never met this man, this Gafard, Rog of Guamelga, the King’s Striker, Prince of the Central Sea, the Reducer of Zair, Sea-Zhantil, Ghittawrer of Genod. He had married her daughter Velia and their daughter’s portrait was affixed as the last in the row. This showed a babyish face, and Delia resigned herself to having a fresh portrait commissioned, for little Didi was growing up.

  The small posy of red roses was echoed by a single rose fixed above the portrait of Gafard, the King’s Striker, Sea-Zhantil.

  Delia swung the door that was the first picture back and forth. Still looking at the face of Velia, she reached into the space beyond the picture and took out a bronze key. The handle was cast into the form of a stemmed rose.

  Next to Velia her twin brother’s face stared in powerful authority from the painted panel. This was Zeg, who had been called Seg in honor of Seg Segutorio. Now Zeg was King of Zandikar, and the face of his wife, Queen Miam, smiled from her own portrait. One day she and
Zeg would have to visit Vallia, or Delia and her husband would have to make the long journey to the inner sea of Kregen, the Eye of the World.

  As for the next portrait — and here Delia sighed in a way far removed from her patient long-suffering anguish over Velia — this was her daughter Dayra, ferocious, mischievous, led into evil ways. This was Dayra, known as Ros the Claw. She it was, surmised Delia, who was the cause of this summons to Lancival.

  Dayra’s twin, Jaidur, known as Vax Neemusbane, looked out from the next picture, and with him his wife, Lildra. They were now King and Queen of Hyrklana. Jaidur had served the SoR very well on secret errands, many of them not even known to his mother. Now he was settling down nicely with Lildra in the island kingdom of Hyrklana. A touch of real responsibility had worked wonders for his wildness, a wild streak he shared with his twin sister and which she showed no signs of outgrowing.

  The penultimate portrait, of Velia, a daughter born later, loved and named for the older Velia, again would soon require replacement, for Velia was growing up. Delia hoped the mistress would allow a visit with Velia here in Lancival, for Velia was being educated and trained by the SoR. It might not be possible. Discipline sometimes imposed a harshness well-nigh insupportable to a mother.

  She held the bronze rose-key in her hand.

  She knew — she had been told — that her dip in the Sacred Pool of Baptism in far Aphrasöe had conferred upon her a thousand years of life. She did not age. She had seen to it that her children and her friends and loved ones had also bathed. Like her husband, she had for the moment pushed aside the unanswerable questions this longevity aroused. If the time ever came for drastic measures, she, at least, would be ready.

  Crossing to the chest with the rose-arbor legs, she opened the front doors.

  She took out a silver-mounted balass wood box, the wood hard and black and shining. She opened the box. From it she took a thick, black, snakelike whip. This she put on the bed, quickly.