“And after all of them?”
“Afterward,” she replied wearily, “we can rest. The fierce destiny that drives Joaquin surely cannot drive him beyond the boundaries of the world.”
“And so,” said Olin, “you fight your way around the world so that you can rest at the end of the journey. Then why not rest now, Margaret? Must you pillow your head on the globe of the planet?”
Fury flamed green in her eyes. She raised her hand and struck the old man across his lips, but it must have been lightly, for he still smiled.
“Fool!” she cried. “Then I will see to it that there is always war! Between me and Joaquin, if need be—or between me and anyone—anyone—so that I can fight!” She paused panting. “Leave me, Einar,” she said tensely. “I do not like the things you bring to mind.”
Still smiling, the old man backed away. At the door he paused. “I will see you before I die, Margaret,” he promised, and was gone.
Slowly, almost wearily, the Princess turned to face Hull.
“Hull,” she said gently, “what do you think of me now?”
“I think you are a black flame blowing cold across the world. I think a demon drives you.”
“And do you hate me so bitterly?”
“I pray every second to hate you.”
“Then see, Hull.” With her little fingers she took his great hands and placed them about the perfect curve of her throat. “Here I give you my life for the taking. You have only to twist once with these mighty hands of yours and Black Margot will be out of the world forever.” She paused. “Must I beg you?”
Hull felt as if molten metal flowed upward through his arms from the touch of her white skin. His fingers were rigid as metal bars, and all the great strength of them could not put one feather’s weight of pressure on the soft throat they circled. And deep in the lambent emerald flames that burned in her eyes he saw again the fire of mockery—jeering, taunting.
“‘You will not?” she said, lifting away his hands, but holding them in hers. “Then you do not hate me?”
“You know I don’t!” he groaned.
“And you do love me?”
“Please,” he muttered. “Is it necessary to torture me? I need no proof of your mastery.”
“Then say you love me.”
“Heaven forgive me for it,” he whispered, “but I do.”
She dropped his hands and smiled. “Then listen to me, Hull. You love little Vail with a truer love, and month by month memory fades before reality. After awhile there will be nothing left in you of Black Margot, but there will be always Vail. I go now hoping never to see you again, but”—and her eyes chilled to green ice—“before I go I settle my score with you.”
She donned her silver gauntlets, raised her hand.
“This for your treachery!” she said, and raked him savagely across his right cheek. Blood spouted, but he stood stolid. “This for your violence!” she said, and the silver gauntlet tore his left cheek. Then her eyes softened. “And this,” she murmured, “for your love!”
Her arms circled him, her body was warm against him, and her exquisite lips burned against his. He felt as if he embraced a flame for a moment, and then she was gone, and a part of his soul went with her. When he heard the hoofs of the stallion Eblis pounding beyond the window, he turned and walked slowly out of the house to where Vail still crouched beside her father’s body. She clung to him, wiped the blood from his cheeks, and strangely, her words were not of her father, or of the sparing of Hull’s life, but of Black Margot.
“I knew you lied to save me,” she murmured. “I knew you never loved her.”
And Hull, in whom there was no falsehood, drew her close to him and said nothing.
But Black Margot rode north from Selui through the night. In the sky before her were thin shadows leading phantom armies, Alexander the Great, Attila, Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, Napoleon, and clearer than all, the battle queen Semiramis. All the mighty conquerors of the past, and where were they, where were their empires, and where, even, were their bones? Far in the south were the graves of men who loved her, all except Old Einar, who tottered like a feeble gray ghost across the world to find his.
At her side Joaquin Smith turned as if to speak, stared, and remained silent. He was not accustomed to the sight of tears in the eyes and on the cheeks of Black Margot.[10]
[1] Selui: The ancient St: Louis.
[2] It is a usual error of historians of the Conquest to speak of the Princess Margaret as either Margaret of Urbs or the Black Flame. Both terms are anachronisms. She was not known as the Black Flame until the time of the poet Sovern, as yet unborn, while of course Urbs, the vast, glittering, brilliant, wicked world metropolis and capital, was at this time only a dream in the mind of Joaquin Smith.
[3] Ormiston: The present village of Ormon.
[4] The Erden resonators. A device, now obsolete, that projected an inductive field sufficient to induce tiny electrical discharges in metal objects up to a distance of many miles. Thus it ignited inflammables such as gunpowder.
[5] Kohlmar’s ionic beams. Two parallel beams of highly actinic light ionize a path of air, and along these conductive lanes of gas an electric current can be passed, powerful enough to kill or merely intense enough to punish.
[6] Weed: The term applied by Dominists (the Master’s partisans) to their opposers. It originated in Joaquin Smith’s remark before the Battle of Memphis: “Even the weeds of the fields have taken arms against us.”
[7] “There are snipers in the copse. I’ll draw them out!”
[8] The field of the Erden resonator passes readily through structures and walls, but is blocked by any considerable natural obstructions, hills, and for some reason, fog-banks or low clouds.
[9] He did, just one week after this date, the date of the Battle of Selui. He crashed at N’Orleans after a flight of thirty minutes in an atomic rocket of the Ring type.
[10] All conversation ascribed to the Princess Margaret in this story is taken verbatim from an anonymous volume published in Urbs in the year 186, called “Loves of the Black Flame.” It is credited to Jacques Lebeau, officer in command of the Black Flame’s personal guard.
The Complete Margaret of Urbs Page 21