The Complete Margaret of Urbs

by Stanley G. Weinbaum

  Bitterly he yielded. “I’ll try, then.” He frowned gloomily. “She saved my life, and—Well, which room is hers?”

  “My father’s. Mine is the western chamber, which she took for her—her maid. We,” she said, “are left to sleep in the kitchen.”

  An hour later, having eaten, he walked somberly home with Vail. The guards let Vail in, but halted Hull. One of them ran exploratory hands about his body. “Orders of Her Highness,” he explained gruffly.

  Hull smiled. The Princess had not trusted his word too implicitly. In a moment the fellow had finished his search and swung the door open.

  Hull entered. He had never seen the interior of the house and for a moment its splendor dazzled him. Carved ancient furniture, woven carpets, intricately worked standards for the oil lamps, and even a full-length mirror of ancient workmanship wherein his own image faced him.

  Upstairs was a dimly lit hall where a guard stood silently. “The Princess Margaret?” he asked, but in place of answer came the liquid tones of Margaret herself. “Let him come in, Corlin.”

  A screen within the door blocked sight of the room. Hull circled it, steeling himself against the memory of that soul-burning loveliness he remembered. But his defense was shattered by the shock that awaited him.

  The screen, indeed, shielded the Princess from the sight of the guard in the hall, but not from Hull’s eyes. He stared appalled at the sight of her lying in indifference in a great tub of water, being bathed by one of her women. He could not avoid a single glimpse of her exquisite form.

  “Oh, sit down!” she said contemptuously. “This will be over in a moment.”

  He kept his eyes averted while water splashed and a towel whisked sibilantly. When he heard her footsteps beside him he glanced up tentatively, still fearful of what he might see, but she was covered now in a full robe of filmy black and gold that made her seem taller.

  Hull felt against the fascination against which he had steeled himself.

  “So,” she said. “You may sit down again. “I do not demand court etiquette in the field.” She sat opposite, and produced a black cigarette, lighting it at the chimney of the lamp on the table.

  “Now,” she said with a faintly ironic smile, “tell me what they say of me here.”

  “They call you witch.”

  “And do they hate me?”

  “Hate you?” he echoed thoughtfully. “At least they will fight you and the Master to the last feather on, the last arrow.”

  “Of course. The young men will fight—except those that Joaquin has bought with the eldarch’s lands—because they know that once within the Empire, fighting is no more to be had. No more joyous, thrilling little wars between the cities, no more boasting, and parading before the pretty provincial girls.” She paused. “And you, Hull Tarvish—what do you think of me?”

  “I call you witch for other reasons.”

  The Princess looked narrowly at him. “Tell me,” she said, “was that the eldarch’s pretty daughter who cried so piteously after you there before the church?”

  “Yes.”

  “And do you love her?”

  “Yes.” This was the opening he had sought. He took the opportunity grimly. “I should like to ask one favor.”

  “Ask it.”

  “I should like to see the chamber that was to have been our bridal room. The west chamber.”

  The Princess laughed disdainfully. “Go see it then.”

  For a moment he feared, or hoped, perhaps, that she was going to let him go alone. Then she rose and followed him to the hall, and to the door of the west chamber.

  CHAPTER VII

  Betrayal

  HULL paused at the door of the west chamber to permit the Princess to enter. Her glorious green eyes flashed speculatively to his face, then she stepped back.

  “You first, Weed,” she commanded.

  He did not hesitate. He turned and strode into the room, hoping that the Harrier “riflemen, if indeed they lurked in the copse, might recognize his mighty figure in time to stay their eager trigger fingers. His scalp prickled as he moved steadily across the window, but nothing happened.

  Behind him the Princess laughed softly. “I have lived too long in the aura of plot and counterplot in N’Orleans,” she said. “I mistrust you without cause, honest Hull Tarvish.”

  Her words tortured him. He turned to see her black robe mold itself to her body as she moved, and, as sometimes happens in moments of stress, he caught an instantaneous picture of her with his sense so quickened that it seemed as if she, himself, and the world were frozen into immobility.

  He remembered her forever as she was then, with her limbs in the act of striding, her green eyes soft in the lamplight. Witch and devil she might be, but she looked like a dark-haired angel, and in that moment his spirit revolted.

  “No!” he bellowed, and sprang toward her, striking her slim shoulders with both hands in a thrust that sent her staggering back into the hallway, there to sit hard and suddenly on the floor beside the amazed guard.

  She sprang up instantly, and there was nothing angelic now in her face. “You—hurt—me!” she hissed. “Me! Now I’ll—” She snatched the guard’s weapon from his belt, thrust it full at Hull’s chest, and sent the blue beam humming upon him.

  It was pain far worse than that at Eaglefoot Flow. He bore it stolidly, grinding into silence the groan that rose in his throat.

  “Treachery again!” she said. “I won’t kill you, Hull Tarvish. I know a better way.” She whirled toward the stair-well. “Lebeau!” she called. “Lebeau! There’s—” She glanced sharply at Hull, and continued, “Il ya des tirailleurs dans le bois. Je vais les tirer en avant.”[7] It was the French of N’Orleans, as incomprehensible to Hull as Aramaic.

  “I’ve a mind,” she blazed, “to strip the Weed clothes from the eldarch’s daughter and send her marching across the window!”

  He was utterly appalled. “She—she—was in town!” he gasped, then fell silent at the sound of feet below.

  “Well, there’s no time,” she retorted. “So, if I must—” She strode steadily into the west chamber, paused a moment, and then stepped deliberately in front of the window!

  Hull was aghast. He watched her stand so that the lamplight must have cast her perfect silhouette full on the pane, stand tense and motionless for the fraction of a breath, and then leap back so sharply that her robe billowed away from her body.

  She had timed it to perfection. Two shots crashed almost together, and the glass shattered. And then, out in the night, a dozen beams criss-crossed, and, thin and clear in the silence after the shots, a yell of mortal anguish drifted up, and another, and a third.

  The Princess Margaret smiled in malice, and sucked a crimson drop from a finger gashed by flying glass. “Your treachery reacts. Instead of my betrayal, you have betrayed your own men.”

  Hull Tarvish bit his lip.

  “Well,” she said musingly, “you’re rather more entertaining than I had expected.”

  He chose to ignore the mockery in her voice. “Perhaps,” he said grimly.

  “Why, then, did you weaken, Hull Tarvish? You might have had my life.”

  “I do not fight women,” he said despondently. “I looked at you—and turned weak.” A question formed in his mind. “But why did you risk your life before the window? You could have had fifty wood runners scour the copse.”

  She smiled, but there was a shrewd narrowness in her eyes. “Because so many of these villages are built above the underground ways of the Ancients—the subways, the sewers. How did I know that your assassin might slip into some burrow and escape? It was necessary to lure them into the disclosure.”

  Hull shadowed the gleam that shot into his own eyes. He remembered suddenly the ancient sewer in which the child Vail had wandered, whose mouth was hidden by blackberry bushes. So the Empire men were not aware of it!

  “Your Highness,” he said grimly, “unless you kill me now, I will be a bitter enemy to your Empire army.�
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  “Perhaps less bitter than you think,” she said softly. “See, Hull, the only three that know of your weakness are dead. No one can name you traitor or weakling.”

  “But I can,” he returned somberly. “And you.”

  “Not I, Hull,” she murmured. “I never blame a man who weakens because of me—and there have been many. Men as strong as you, Hull, and some that the world still calls great.” She turned toward her own chamber. “Come in here,” she said in altered tones. “Tell me, would you like to see the Great City, Hull?”

  “You know I would.”

  She shrugged. “Oh, you can visit N’Orleans, of course, but suppose I offered you the chance to go as the—the guest, we’ll say, of the Princess Margaret. What would you give for that privilege?”

  “What would you ask for it?” he rejoined guardedly.

  “Oh, your allegiance, perhaps. Or perhaps the betrayal of your little band of Harriers, who will be the devil’s own nuisance to stamp out of these hills.”

  He looked up, startled that she knew the name. “The Harriers? How—”

  She smiled. “We have friends among the Ormiston men. Friends bought with land,” she added contemptuously. “But what of my offer, Hull?”

  He scowled. “You say as your guest. What am I to understand by that?”

  She leaned across the table, her exquisite green eyes on his, her hair flaming blue-black, her perfect lips in a faint smile. “What you please, Hull. Whatever you please.”

  “Do you mean,” he said huskily, “that you’d do that for so small a thing as the destruction of a little enemy band? You, with the whole Empire at your back?”

  She nodded. “It saves trouble, doesn’t it?”

  “And honesty, virtue, honor, mean as little to you as that? Is this one of your usual means of conquest? Do you ordinarily sell your—your favors for—”

  “Not ordinarily,” she interrupted coolly. “First I must like my co-partner in the trade. You, Hull—I like those vast muscles of yours, and your stubborn courage, and your slow, clear mind. You are not a great man, Hull, for your mind has not the cold fire of genius, but you are a strong one, and I like you for it.”

  “Like me!” he roared, starting up in his chair. “Yet you think I’ll trade what honor’s left me for—that! You think I’ll betray my cause! You’re wrong!”

  She shook her head, smiling. “No. I wasn’t wrong, for I thought you wouldn’t.”

  “Oh, you did!” he snarled. “Then what if I’d accepted? What would you have done then?”

  “What I promised.” She laughed at his angry, incredulous face. “Don’t look so shocked, Hull. I’m not little Vail Ormiston. I’m the Princess Margaret of N’Orleans, called Margaret the Divine by those who love me, and by those who hate me called—well, you must know what my enemies call me.”

  “I do!” he biased. “Black Margot!” he rasped. “A good name for you!”

  “Doubtless. But you fail to understand, Hull. I’m an Immortal. Would you have me follow the standards of death-bound Vail Ormiston?”

  “Yes! By what right are you superior to her standards?”

  Her lips had ceased to smile, and her eyes turned wistful. “By the right that I can act in no other way, Hull,” she said softly. A tinge of emotion quavered in her voice. “Immortality!” she whispered. “Year after year after year of sameness. I have no sense of destiny like Joaquin, who sees before him Empire.

  His anger had drained away. He was staring at her aghast, appalled.

  “When killing palls and love grows stale, what’s left? Did I say love? How can there be love for me when I know that if I love a man, it will be only to watch him age and turn wrinkled, weak, and flabby? And when I beg Joaquin for immortality for the man I love he flaunts before me that promise of his to Martin Sair, to grant it only to those already proved worthy. By the time a man’s worthy he’s old.”

  She went on tensely. “I tell you, Hull, that I’m so friendless and alone that I envy you death-bound ones! Yes, and one of these days I’ll join you!”

  He gulped. “My God!” he muttered. “Better for you if you’d stayed in your native mountains with friends, home, husband, and children.”

  “Children!” she echoed, her eyes misting with tears. “Immortals can’t have children. Sometimes I curse Martin Sair and his hard rays. I don’t want immortality; I want life!”

  Hull found his mind in a whirl. He scarcely knew his own allegiance. “God!” he whispered. “I’m sorry!”

  “And you, Hull—will you help me—a little?”

  Suddenly some quirk of her dainty lips caught his attention. He stared incredulously into the green depths of her eyes. It was true. There was laughter there. She had been mocking him! And as she perceived his realization, her soft laughter rippled like rain or water.

  “You—devil!” he choked. “You black witch! I wish I’d let you be killed!”

  “Oh, no,” she said demurely. “Look at me, Hull.”

  The command was needless. He watched her exquisite face.

  “Do you love me, Hull?”

  “I love Vail Ormiston,” he rasped.

  “But do you love me?”

  He rose. “Whatever harm I can do your cause,” he said, “that harm I will do. I will not be twice a traitor.”

  CHAPTER VIII

  Torment

  HULL looked down at noon over Ormiston valley, where Joaquin Smith was marching. At his side Vail Ormiston paused, and together they gazed silently over the Selui road, now black with riding men and rumbling wagons on their way to attack the remnant of the Confederation army in Selui. Three hundred soldiers and two hundred horsemen remained in Ormiston to deal with the Harriers, under Black Margot herself.

  “Our moment comes tonight,” Hull said soberly. “Our numbers all but equal theirs, and surprise is on our side.”

  Vail nodded. “The ancient tunnel was a bold thought, Hull. The Harriers are shoring up the crumbled places. Father is with them.”

  “He shouldn’t be.”

  “But this is his hope, Hull. He lives for this.”

  “Small enough hope! Suppose we’re successful, Vail. What will it mean save the return of Joaquin Smith and his army?”

  “Oh, no!” cried Vail. “If our success means the end of Black Margot, isn’t that enough? Besides, you know that half the Master’s powers are the work of the witch. Enoch—poor Enoch—said so.”

  Hull winced. Enoch had been one of the three marksmen slain outside the west window.

  “Enoch,” she repeated softly. “He loved me in his sour way, Hull, but once I had known you, I had no thoughts for him.” Hull slipped his arm about her, cursing himself that he could not steal his thought away from Margaret of N’Orleans, because it was Vail he loved, and Vail he wanted to love. But he could not blot Margaret’s Satanic loveliness from his inward gaze.

  “Well,” he sighed, “let it be tonight, then. Was it four hours past sunset? Good. The Empire men should be sleeping or gaming in Tigh’s Tavern by that time. It’s for us to pray for our gunpowder.”

  “Gunpowder? Oh, but didn’t you hear what I told File Ormson and the Harriers, back there on the ridge? The casters of the spell are gone; Joaquin Smith has taken them to Selui. I watched and listened from the kitchen this morning.”

  “The sparkers? They’re gone?”

  “Yes. They called them reson—resonators—”

  “Resonators,” said Hull, recalling Old Einar’s words.

  “Something like that. There were two of them, great iron barrels on swivels, and they swept the valley north and south, and east and west, and over toward Norse there was the sound of shots and the smoke of a burning building. They loaded them on wagons and dragged them away toward Selui.”

  “They didn’t cross the ridge with their spell,”[8] said Hull. “The Harriers still have powder.”

  “Yes,” murmured Vail, drawing his arm closer about her. “Tell me,” she said suddenly, “what did she want of
you last night?”

  Hull hesitated for a moment. “Treason,” he said finally. “She wanted me to betray the Harriers.”

  “What did she offer you for betrayal?”

  Again he hesitated. “A great reward,” he answered at last. “A reward out of all proportion to the task.”

  “But in what way? Men say so much of her beauty, of her deadly charm. Hull—did you feel it?”

  “I love you, Vail.”

  She sighed, and drew yet closer. “I think you’re the strongest man in the world, Hull. The very strongest.”

  “I’ll need to be,” he muttered, staring gloomily over the valley.

  Vail left him in Ormiston village and took her way hesitantly homeward. Hull did what he could about the idle shop, and when the sun slanted low, bought himself a square loaf of brown bread, a great slice of cheese, and a bottle of wine. It was just as he finished his meal in his room that a pounding on the door of the shop summoned him.

  It was an Empire man. “From Her Highness,” he said, and handed him an intricately folded slip of black paper.

  The mountain youth stared at it.

  “This scratching means nothing to me,” Hull said.

  The Empire man sniffed contemptuously. “I’ll read it,” he said, taking the missive. “It says, ‘Follow the messenger to our quarters,’ and it’s signed Margarita Imperii Regina, which means Margaret, Princess of the Empire.”

  “Suppose I won’t go,” growled Hull.

  “This isn’t an invitation, Weed. It’s a command.”

  Hull grunted assent and followed the messenger.

  This time, however, he found the Princess clothed, wearing the diminutive shorts and shirt that were her riding costume. She sat in a deep chair beside the table, a flagon of wine at hand and a black cigarette in her fingers. Her jet hair was like a helmet of ebony against the ivory of her forehead and throat, and her green eyes like twin emeralds.

  “Sit down,” she said as he stood before her. Fire danced in her eyes. “Hull, I am as strong as most men, but I believe those vast muscles of yours could overpower me as if I were some shrinking provincial girl. And yet—”