by Jeffrey Lord
Taleen joined him, huddling close. "What is it, Blade? Your man does not return does it take so long to catch hares?"
He put a hand over her mouth, his lips to her ear. She had lost the odor of chypre now and smelled only of sweet girlish flesh.
"Stay here and keep quiet," said Blade. "I will go look for Sylvo."
"No! I will not stay in this place alone. I will come with you."
"Quietly, then, and not too close. If there is danger I must have room to swing my axe."
He had no chance to use the great axe. He and Taleen were not fifty yards into the trees, along a faint path, when the finely woven nets fell from above and enmeshed them. There was a sudden great shouting and men leaped from the trees and from bushes fringing the path.
Blade, his stalwart frame netted like any fish, could not free the axe for action. He heard Taleen scream once "Beata's men! We are taken!"
He butted and bellowed and made a rare fight of it while he could. He got his hands through the net and knocked heads together, swinging his massive fists like maces, sending half a dozen of his attackers sprawling. At the last, standing like one of the forest oaks, choking a man black-faced with either hand, Blade went down before a dozen men. He took three with him and kept pummeling them until a spear butt crashed down on his head.
At the very last, before the darkness, he heard a man scream a command: "Do not kill the big one! Queen Beata wants him alive."
Chapter Eight
Blade awoke in an oubliette. The slimy stone floor was covered with dank straw in which things crawled. A wick, guttering in a pannikin of fish oil, gave the only light. He was chained, hand and foot, to a ring bolt set into a wall. He itched intolerably and there was a great soreness at the back of his head. For a moment he lost control, slipped the habit of self-discipline built up over the years, and raged at the chains, tugging at them with fierce oaths and swinging and slamming them about.
"No use, master," said a voice from a dim corner. "We are well taken. The evil Queen Beata has us, and even the Lady Alwyth is merciful by comparison. I have been thinking hard, master, and my thought is that we are in a great deal of trouble!" There was a great rattling of chains as Sylvo shifted his malformed bones.
Blade, forcing calm on himself, squatted in the filthy straw. "What of the Princess Taleen?"
He could not see the man's shrug, but heard the chains rattle again.
"Safe enough, master. At least not yet harmed, as I saw. Beata holds her for ransom from Voth, as before I remember your telling of it and so we are back to the beginning. Or the lady is. What happens to us may be another matter and not one on which I like to think."
Blade quietly tested one of the chains, his huge sinews cracking with the effort. The chain held.
"Keep your heart up," said Blade. "I will somehow get us out of this." At the moment he could not have said how.
Sylvo's tone grew more cheerful. "So you will, master. I was forgetting that you are something of a wizard."
Blade, testing the chains again, scowled in the gloom. It was going to take a little more than wizardry to get them out of this. He began to question Sylvo; the basis of all effort, of all successful action, is knowledge.
"What is this place and how came we here?"
"A great castle called Craghead. On the Western Sea. As to coming here I walked, the Lady Taleen rode, and you were carried on a litter. You were well drugged to keep you sleeping, master, as Beata's men were in fear of you."
That accounted for his slight headache. He remembered the spear butt crashing down and fingered the wound on his head, swollen and sticky through the thick hair.
"They had nets in the trees," Blade mused. "I wonder how at just that place and time?"
"Ar, master. I wondered also. I was taken like a minnow and stifled without a cry. But I think I have it the Lady Alwyth must have sent word to Beata. They are in league, no doubt. King Lycanto would never have done it he and the Queen are enemies."
It was possible. Indeed it was probable. Lady Alwyth ran deep, was an intriguer by nature, and Blade had spurned her. Taleen was hated for her beauty, if nothing else, and Alwyth would have many tendrils to her web. She and Queen Beata may have been conspiring for years. Blade dismissed the thought. He must think of what would serve him now.
"Tell me of this Queen Beata, Sylvo. What manner of woman is she?"
Sylvo told him and Blade felt the prickles rise on his neck as he listened. Yet he doubted not a word. Such things were in this strange dimension he now inhabited. As real as life or death.
"And that is all I know," Sylvo concluded. "She is a bawd, if the stories can be believed, and likes women as well as men in bed. Children also it is said that she murders these afterwards so they cannot carry tales and I myself have seen her cruelty to those who serve her. Most of the men lack an ear, the left one, and many of her women have their left breast cut off. As we entered the castle I saw men hanging on iron hooks on the walls, and was told they were the guards who let the Lady Taleen escape. One was still wriggling, poor bastard."
"What is her age?"
Chains rattled as Sylvo moved. "Who knows that? Some say fifty, some say five hundred. If she is a witch, as is also said, I doubt not that the last figure could be possible. All say she is beautiful, but none is allowed close to her and so it may be artifice. Women are full of tricks, even witches, and "
A trapdoor opened in the ceiling and a face stared down at them.
"You he who is called Richard Blade you are wanted by the Queen at once. No tricks, now, or you will be slain on the instant."
A ladder was lowered into the oubliette and armed men swarmed down it. They wore the same loose breeches and cross-gaitering of the Albs, but their mailed coats were longer and heavier and their helmets flatter. The helmets bore the blazon of a unicorn instead of the Albian dragon.
None of them had a left ear.
They unchained Blade and pushed him to the ladder. Sylvo set up a squalling. "I lack water here. And food! Will you let a man starve and thirst? The place is also lousy and you have rats in all as stinking a dungeon as I have ever seen."
Some of the men laughed. One walked over to Sylvo and kicked him into silence. "I'll wot," the man said, "that you know whereof you speak and have known many prisons. Now shut that ugly mouth or you die before the time set."
Blade was prodded up the ladder. None of the men approached him too closely. As he went through the trapdoor he heard Sylvo call after him.
"Be of cheer, master, and remember that you are a wizard."
The castle called Craghead was vast. Blade was conducted down endless long corridors floored with rushes, ill lit by torches in sconces. They ascended score after score of stairs, the stone hollowed by centuries of wear, and crossed bristling battlements where Blade caught the tang of salt and heard the sullen mutter of surf far below in the mist. It was dark, without stars or moon, and the roiling bank of mist below was like cloud seen from above.
They came to a round, tall thrusting tower, the pinnacle of Craghead. Then more stairs and Blade was pushed into a chamber and a great ironbound door slammed behind him. He heard a heavy bar fall. He was alone.
And yet not alone. He sensed it from the first. He made no sign that he suspected a watcher as he strolled about the chamber, his mien calm and his handsome face impassive. If Queen Beata wished to play cat and mouse it was all right with him. He was thinking now, planning again, and he judged it a good omen that he and Sylvo had not been immediately executed.
The chamber, really a series of rooms with connecting doors, was furnished sumptuously. He had seen nothing like it in Alb. There were skins on the flagstoned floor one of a bear that must have stood ten feet tall when alive and flat couches covered with hide. He saw no windows. The rooms were warm enough, and the stone floors warmest of all. He guessed at thermal ducts that were heated from below.
In a corner was a large table laden with cold meats and white bread another thing he had no
t seen in Alb and bronze and pewter vessels containing beer and wine. Blade ate, but was careful not to drink. He was going to need all his wits about him.
He covertly examined the wall hangings, of pale leather richly worked with golden thread, mostly in cabals that he did not understand. There was one large and central hanging depicting a unicorn and, as he watched in seeming unconcern, he saw the flicker of an eye. The watcher! He had no doubt it was Queen Beata.
Blade, his mouth full, and with a joint of meat in his right hand, bowed extravagantly to the unicorn. "I thank you for the food, good queen. It is excellent and I am hungry. Might I request that some be sent to my man now languishing in your dungeon?"
The eye glittered. Then came a muffled laugh, and a voice as husky and deep as many a man's.
"I have heard true of you, Blade. An upstart rogue of great impudence. Neither did Alwyth lie about your face and figure both are as fair as she wrote. Tell me, Blade, are you the man you look to be? For I warn you fairly, your life depends on it."
There was a chill beneath the huskiness that sent the prickles up his spine again. He did not know the manner of it, but grasped the substance he was on trial again.
With another bow he answered, "If I am a rogue, your Majesty, at least I am a modest one. As to being a man I lay claim to that also. How much a man I cannot say until I know the hazards I face."
Again the muffled laugh. "You mince words like a Dru! I do not like that. But in other aspects you please me and you shall have a chance to prove yourself. I shall put you to the sweetest ordeal of all, Blade, and if you win I may be persuaded to spare your life."
He did not bow again. Hands on hips, he stared straight at the unicorn. "And that of my man, Queen? And the Princess Taleen shall go free to her father?"
Silence. Then, in a voice as cold as the mist enshrouding the battlements: "You try too far, Blade! A little impudence is like salt, I relish it, but you dare to bargain with me? So soon as though you had rights here!"
He had begun with boldness and with boldness he must continue. He stared at the flickering eye and answered in a voice as cold as her own. "I only ask, my queen. A man is no man who does not seek to aid his friends."
"Enough! You will be prepared for my coming. I advise you to spend some of that time in learning how to leash your tongue."
The eye vanished.
There was a rippling of leather as a door opened behind another wall hanging and four maidens came into the room. They wore only gauzy pants, cut full and falling to the knee, and secured by a single amber button. Their hair was cut short, in mannish style, and each lacked a left breast. Where the breast had been each carried a saucer-shaped red scar. The sanguinary badge of Beata's service. Blade marveled that the men and women would serve such a cruel mistress, and for an instant his memory flickered into life and he could remember another place, another world, in which such things were not tolerated. And yet that world, as much as he could recall of it, had been bad enough. Then the mists closed in again and memory vanished.
The maidens were all young and fair, discounting the mammary scars, and they went about their tasks with efficiency and absolute silence. They did not look directly at Blade, nor converse among themselves. He guessed at the reason for this and, while the others stared in stricken horror, he gently seized a shapely blonde girl and pried her mouth open. Her tongue had been cut out.
They filled a large bronze tub with foamy warm water and bathed him. He was dried on towels of fine linen, perfumed with chypre and dressed in saffron-dyed linen breeches and a long tunic. He was given soft leather sandals that laced to his knees. His beard was combed out and his thick dark hair combed into place.
When they had finished he was allowed to see the results in a bronze mirror and could not repress a grimace of disgust at the finery he was wearing. Yet this was Queen Beata's game and he must play by her rules. By this time he had a shrewd idea of what the game would be, and he was determined to best her at it. In his past life he had been a sensual man, highly sexed, and hardly let a day pass without gratification. Now he was more than ready. He had had enough of blood and iron for the nonce, and of vixens like Lady Alwyth and malicious kittens like Taleen.
The maidens left and Blade strode the chambers alone, a hard smile on his face. He would give this cruel queen a bit more than she bargained for, and so might ensure his future. He knew, better than most men, what women are born knowing, that sex is a weapon.
There was movement behind the unicorn wall hanging. Blade, at his ease on one of the couches, regarded the hanging with equanimity. Let the bitch come. He was more than ready for her.
The hanging parted in the center and Queen Beata stepped forth. She wore a simple black robe that clung to her supple figure. The robe was girdled with a scarlet cord and though it was opaque it concealed nothing, clinging like oil to her breasts and buttocks and thighs. Her face was long and deathly pale, with a scarlet slash of mouth and a high arching nose, and her upswept hair, dark and tinged with silver, was so intricately coifed that Blade guessed at once that it was a wig.
There had been a dozen large candles in the room before; the maidens, on leaving, had taken all but one. In this tiny spear of unwavering light she approached him.
Blade stood up and bowed slightly, with a touch of insolence. Instinct told him that servility was not the ploy.
"Your Majesty, you are beautiful."
It was, in a certain sense, the truth. She was not young even in the dim candlelight he saw the finespun wrinkles around her mouth and the throat creases, and what the wig concealed he did not know yet she had beauty. Or the relic of beauty. He was in no position, or mood, to make fine distinctions.
For a moment she regarded him without speaking. The almond shaped eyes, as shiny black as lacquer, glinted through narrowed lids that had been painted blue. She examined every inch of him before she spoke.
"You will approach me, Blade, on your knees. It is the custom here all who seek my favor must tender to me that homage. Do so now."
It occurred to Blade that he was not so much seeking her favors, as having them thrust on him, yet he complied. He slid off the couch and to his knees, with what grace he could muster, and sidled toward her.
Queen Beata's robe fell open. Blade, glancing up, saw that the body, if not the face, was young. Her breasts were firm pale goblets, her belly flat and unwrinkled, her hips trimly flowed into legs that were slim as any girl's. Her body scent was cloying, thick with woman smell and chypre.
"Good," Beata said, her voice cold and mocking, yet excited. He wondered which pleased her the most to kill a man and hang him on hooks, or to have him sexually. Both? "You have made homage and so will live a little time. I will confess that I am glad of it, for you are a man such as I have never seen before this night. Come now, Blade, to the couch, and prove me that you are a man and not a phantom, not a tunic and breeches stuffed with muscles that are useless to a woman."
At the couch she bade him lie just so. She adjusted his brawny limbed body to her exact liking. Then she disrobed him, lingering over each part of his nakedness with her lips and fingers. She was still wearing the black robe and when he reached for one of her breasts she slapped his hand aside.
"I decide, Blade, when it is time for that! You will obey. That is all I require of you. That you obey and be instantly ready when I have need of you."
Blade, who at the moment was very much instantly ready, still thought it a tall order. Every man has his limitations. The situation might have been amusing, take away the grim reality. His life, and that of Sylvo, and possibly the Princess Taleen, hung on his ability to perform for the lady. He had an instant of panic during which he feared that the tension, the pressure of the moment, might in itself cause him to fail. He fought off the idea. It would be irony indeed to die of that.
The queen took the dominant position. She kept silent and would not let him speak. She kissed his mouth, avidly and wetly, her tongue sharp and probing, while her hands
roamed over his big body. Her pleasure was at first tactile, she could not seem to have enough of his flesh; then her pleasure switched and became oral. She suckled him lightly, teasing and biting, then put that aside to straddle him and permit him to thrust himself into her. She moaned at last the first amorous sound she had uttered and fell into rhythm with him. Blade, watching her face contort the mouth writhing and the eyes wild, the sinews taut and stringy in her throat knew that this was an old woman. At the moment it did not matter.
She began to talk, the words gasping and jolting out of her straining mouth as she rode him down to climax.
"You-do-well-Blade! That is good. No! Keep you silent. Only I speak Ah, sweet Frigga, you do well! Do not stop. Never stop until I command or you die on the morning. Many have pleased me this far, only to fail at last and so die of it. Ahhhhhh, Blade! Blade! Frigga take me if I am not beswooned of you!"
The queen, trembling and thrashing about, collapsed atop him and murmured: "Ah, Blade, that was fine for first encounter. You did not spend?"
So tumultuous was his breathing that he could not speak and shook his head. He had been on the verge a dozen times and had fought it back. A fine pass, he thought bitterly, when a man's life depends on his ability to last.
Beata placed herself so her breasts were against his lips. "Caress me, Blade. I will have more of you, and soon. Meantime, for such fine first service, I will grant you any small favor you may ask."
At such close vantage, as she lay on him with eyes closed and face limned in candle ray, he saw how heavily she painted. The wig had slipped a bit, was askew a trifle, but he could not make out the color beneath it.