Thought of this made Jaron recall his duties at the palace which he had deserted. Unease was added to his mounting impatience. During the Carnival the famed and revered Fire Globe of Cyre was placed on public exhibition, and Jaron, as captain, was supposed to ride close herd upon the soldiers guarding it. The Fire Globe was the symbol and vessel of the goddess Cyre, one of the most important deities in the Gran pantheon. It was also a symbol of Dorn’s power, and if it were stolen all manner of misfortunes might descend upon the fortress-city.
Jaron did not want that to happen, for oddly enough he had grown to like Dorn. His position in the palace guard of King Kalar was a comfortable one. And old Kalar, kindly and patient, was a nice person to work for. Jaron’s other duties had made it necessary for him to remain close to the king, and in this manner he had become acquainted with Nela, queen of the fortress-city of Harn. She had made him forget the other women, court ladies and servant wenches alike, with which the palace abounded.
Nela was flame and ice, a vision of golden skin and golden-red hair, with red-brown eyes that could be slumbrously inviting or coolly mocking, and wide, full red lips that had a trick of grinning in a curious, one-sided way. She was taller than the usual run of Gran women, broad of shoulder and deep of breast, her body strong and yet lithely curved. And she had a mind as bright and keen—and often as hard—as a new-forged blade.
Jaron had spoken with her at palace functions, danced with her, and then with increasing boldness had flirted with her. It had been like a duel with daggers in the dark, a duel made more interesting by the fact of his opponent being a girl. She had set his mind afire, and finally, when she had suggested that he meet her in this spot, he had quickly consented. He had put a subordinate in his place, obtained a mask, and hurried here.
Only Nela had not shown up. And there was no indication that she would.
Jaron dared not wait any longer. Despite his mask and cloak, his roving eyes informed him that his presence beside the fountain was attracting notice. He was considerably taller and heavier than the slim, golden people of Gran. Soon—if it had not already happened—he would be identified as the outland captain of Kalar’s palace guard.
SCANNING the crowds once more, Jaron at last shrugged his big shoulders and started away from the fountain. Almost at once he found four men barring his path. They wore masks and cloaks, and held within these latter, but opened so Jaron could see, they gripped glittering daggers.
“Stay a while longer, friend, and you won’t be hurt,” one of the man said.
Jaron’s black brows lifted in mild inquiry, though the sudden light in his amber eyes would have warned a more astute observer. “Who are you?” he asked.
“We are men with orders,” the spokesman of the group returned.
Jaron was politely interested. “Whose orders, may I ask?”
“The orders of one it is wise to obey.”
“Those orders are to keep me here, is that it?” Beneath his quiet exterior Jaron was thinking swiftly. If efforts were being made to keep him away from the palace, something sinister must be afoot. It was imperative that he return at once.
He was not dismayed by the numbers of those confronting him, but he cursed his lack of foresight in having left his sword at the palace. Weapons were supposed to be laid aside during the Carnival—at least those easily seen. He had a poniard with him, true enough, but his sword would have made the task ahead of him swifter and more certain.
The spokesman was nodding grimly. “You guessed correctly, friend. If you remain here for as long as we will it, you will not come to harm.”
Jaron shrugged, glanced leisurely to his rear—and then, with a movement tigerishly agile despite his size, he leaped back toward the fountain. At the same time his right hand slipped the poniard from its sheath and his left caught the folds of the cloak behind him, whipping them about his forearm. He laughed, then, a hard laugh that made his white teeth gleam against the bronze setting of his face.
“Keep me here—if you can! You will find your orders hard work!”
Only momentarily was the group taken aback by Jaron’s action. In the next instant, bringing their daggers from beneath their cloaks, they surged after him, spreading out so as to surround him on all sides.
“Quick, now!” the leader of the four cried, his tone low and tense. “Subdue him. He must not be allowed to escape us.”
Jaron braced himself against the fountain rim. As the first man came at him, he lashed out with a foot, sent the other flying into a companion. The remaining two closed in. He caught the dagger thrust of the nearest upon his cloak-covered arm and slashed with his own blade. The man gasped, staggered back, and fell. Then the second—the leader of the attackers—was upon Jaron, crashing into him in a charge from the side and throwing him back at an awkward angle against the fountain. Jaron felt his dagger hand splash into water, and as he hung for a moment, off balance, he saw the other two men hurrying to join the fray.
He flung a ragged sheet of water into their faces, then twisted sharply. The leader’s blade grazed the side of his neck and shot into the empty air beyond. For the space of a heartbeat, the man was prone against Jaron, and in that instant Jaron struck, plunging his poniard into the other’s chest at the side.
THE TWO survivors, still blinking water from their eyes, abruptly halted. Realizing that their leader was seriously injured, if not dying, they seemed to lose all enthusiasm for further battle. When Jaron pushed his victim aside and started at them, they turned and ran, disappearing into the milling groups in the plaza, only a few of which appeared to have noticed the swift struggle.
Unimpeded, now, Jaron whirled away from the fountain, slipping into the gaps among the crowds of celebrants. He began working his way hurriedly back to the palace.
Thoughts bewildered and anxious raced through his mind. Short, fierce, and filled with peril though the fight had been, he had yet managed to discover that his opponents wore beneath their cloaks the uniforms of Harn warriors. Nela’s men! Had she set them on him? Had her tryst with him been merely a ruse to take him from the palace—part of a plot?
Presently he was beyond the crowded plaza and running along the broad avenue, lined with trees and statues, which led to the palace. The great irons gates were open, as they always were during the Carnival of Gods. He hastened through them, throwing the edges of his cloak back over his shoulders so that his guard uniform would be in clear evidence and prevent him from being delayed.
Through the broad main entrance he ran. As he progressed along the wide hall beyond, he suddenly heard a tumult of, sound, the mingled screams of women and the shouts of men. The noises came from the direction of the vast audience hall where the Fire Globe stood on exhibit.
That audience hall was the pride of the Kings of Dorn. Even above the mad crush of screaming men and women, the austere and timeworn majesty of the vaulted and interlaced arcades, the high windows through which the last red glow of sunset gave a sinister sensing as if the sky itself were pronouncing doom—the intricate pendentive leaping up and up above the springing of the arches, covered with intertwining scroll work in the form of the ancient and potent formula for the banishment of evil.
That magical inscription was tonight not efficaceous, reasoned Jaron, casting about confusedly for something on which to center some counteractivity—some way to bring order out of this seemingly meaningless crush.
The tall, spare form of the king, mounting step by step to the great dais! There on a tripod of black iron, inlaid with gold and emerald figures, the Fire Globe shimmered. That mysterious glory of orange and pale flickering blue and the vibrant thrilling green—that was the Fire Globe which gave off always this thrilling light more pleasant by far than music—that was music, but a music of light, infinitely varying, yet always the same.
Jaron began to stride toward the king, hurling men to right and left, lifting the women aside—making his way toward the quivering pointed beard of the old King Kalar, noting the dull and wea
ry red that stained his usually pallid face—noting the fear and the sense of inevitable doom that overlaid his face with despair. This despair was suddenly explained to Jaron, for between himself and the King on the steps of the dais from among the press of people and guards about the base of the dais—rose a black menace of amorphous shapelessness.
And where it had been, unseen by Jaron behind the press of bodies, lay now a score of stiffened bodies, rigidly outspread, and all the people pressing madly back from this circle of sudden death. The thing, whatever it was, stretched slow fingers that grew into tentacles—toward the King himself. The King pressed closer to the Fire Globe, and Jaron saw now that it was the gentle, warm and thrilling beams of the Fire Globe alone that held that deadly mystery of death motionless there, that kept back its fingers from about the King.
EVEN AS Jaron decided to mount the dais and stand there with him, facing that mysterious messenger of death as courageously as his King; the thin hesitant finger probed its way to the King’s body—reaching clear around the Globe to touch him. Kalar tottered, stiffened with an effort, then tottered again and fell with a strangely loud sound to the floor.
The strange dark web of force vibrated quickly, up and down, in a weird kind of exultation—then the tentacles of it reached again into the glow of the Globe, wrapping one about each leg of the tall tripod—and in one slow instant of a sinking sense of irreparable loss—Jaron saw the Globe itself borne aloft with the black amorphous shape, lifting high above the heads of the crowd! Swifter it moved, and with a sudden rush dashed against the colored panes of the high pointed window behind the dais—crashing out the panes and the framework together—then floated through the opening, drifting on and on, higher and higher. Jaron rushed to the window, peered after the weird monster of unexplainable strength—only to see it disappearing in the sky above the towers of the fortress walls of Dorn.
Within the dark web of its winged force went the Fire Globe, like a goldfish in an ebon net.
Even as Jaron turned back helplessly, a hand fell on his shoulder and the voice of Ron, his lieutenant, strangely cold and formal:
“The King commands your presence. He is dying, Captain Jaron.”
Jaron followed the stiff back of Lieutenant Ron Fiert, and in his heart he knew that if the King lived, one Captain Jaron would serve him no more.
* * *
THERE WAS a strange white frost over the livid face of King Kalar. His voice came to Jaron as from a great distance, weak, yet filled with a strength net physical, but from the last reserves of mental force.
“Captain Jaron, you have betrayed the trust I placed in you. In the time of my greatest need you were not at your post. I do not think you will attempt any denial?”
Jaron only stood dumbly, his heart aching in his chest. He must have unconsciously loved this man, for as he lay there dying, Jaron’s hurt was very deep. Kalar was blaming his death was partly upon Jaron, it was evident. He had deserted his post of guard command over the great Fire Globe of Cyre for the lure of a pair of ripe lips. The King’s voice cut him like a knife.
“You, Jaron of Korl, are deprived of all command over any soldier of Dorn. From this day forward my curse rests on you. Those who love me will respect my words after my death, as you will learn. Take him away, let him rot in our prison till he remembers who it is that has stolen our Goddess’ fiery Globe of Power!”
Jaron winced as the man whom he had considered his best friend in the fortress, Ron of the bold fierce eyes, stripped off his shoulder ornaments, ripped the Gold Dragon of ancient Dorn from the tunic of his uniform. Between two of his own men, now his guards, Jaron wheeled and left the dying King.
But his head was buzzing with the whys and wherefores of the weird theft of the Fire Globe. There was wizardry in it, and Jaron made shift to excuse his own defection with the thought that no unskilled soldier could outwit the mind behind this night’s work.
* * *
THE DAYS dragged by in the cell they had given him. Jaron lost count; it did not matter.
Came a day when the feet of the single guard came, not singly, but tramping in time with several others. Jaron rose. He grasped the bars in his two hairy-backed hands, the strength in him suddenly exerted as if to pull them from their sockets. They came for him!
The faces of the men told him much, knowing them and the routine of the place as he did. From lean tanned face to face his eyes swept, and his swift mind added the divergent impressions unconsciously into conscious meaning. They had not come to kill. They had not come to question. Then they must have come to take him before some judge, someone in power—and not Kalar, for there was no fresh disapproval on their faces, no sign that they were carrying out Kalar’s punishment still further.
Something told him that Kalar was now surely dead, though his taciturn guard had not mentioned it to him.
In silence, Jaron stepped out as the cell door swung open. He spaced himself between the four guards, swung off in time with their stride. Just as he had when he had been the proud Captain of the personal guard of the King. Yet how different now that he was a disgraced captive!
The four remained silent, and Jaron remembered Kalar’s last utterance. “Those who love me will respect my words, even after my death”—The old ruler was right! Jaron would have sworn these men would have died for him, their Captain. But he knew now they had loved the old King more!
His four guards halted at the door of the throne room. It appeared that the only way he was going to know who sat there now on the ancient seat of the winged beasts, was to walk in past the two ominous axe-heads waiting in the hands of the two burly warriors, just inside.
The long gold runner of heavy pile carpet curved across the dark pattern of the parquet floor. The ancient throne was just out of sight of the doorway.
Jaron shrugged, paced slowly on past the two soldiers so carefully ignoring him—then stopped in amazement.
For on the somewhat worn carved wood and metal of the throne sat the blazing red-gold beauty of Nela—the Queen of Harn! Puzzling, walking still in the same silence that had seemed to envelop his very life since the King had fallen, Jaron advanced to the foot of the throne. He stopped there, as the guards crossed axes before his chest.
There was a dull anger in Jaron, strangely mingled in his mind with the fire of her beauty. Graceful she was, there before him, the pearls in her dark red-gold hair were somehow far planets bathed in a dull glow of anger, for which he had no complete explanation, not believing somehow in the perfidy of which he suspected her. He stared at her sultry mocking eyes, could not help being thrilled as always with the deep and graceful bosom, the strongly built womanly body, the sensuous lips smiling her one-sided, secretive smile.
“You deceived me, Nela!” Jaron’s voice was more bitter with emotion than he intended. For it was not good to feel that one whom he had placed in so high regard had used him as one uses a chessman—for ends which can only mean the loss of the piece.
NELA lifted one hand in a regal motion. The two axes crossed before his chest were withdrawn, and the six men about the throne withdrew. They were alone, but for the two at the far doorway.
Nela spoke now swiftly, her voice low and urgent.
“Kalar had great respect for me. How much I did not realize, Jaron, or what has happened would not have happened. I coveted his throne, for who holds Dorn holds all Gran in the hollow of his hand. This place is strategically more important than Harn itself. Long have I plotted to win it. But I did not know Kalar so well, really, until he died. Then I learned, too late, that he had planned to make me queen, to avoid future struggle between Harn and Dorn. This, for the sake of our people uniting the two strongholds under one ruler.
“I did not know, and plotted with Ennu. You must have heard of that dark Sorcerer? He was to steal the Fire Globe, which would give Harn power over the Blue men who are the greatest barrier between our forces and Dorn. We could not pass in force without it, the fierce Blue men would gather and battle to t
he death. But they have a reverence for all the Gods, and an especial respect for our Goddess Cyre. They know the Fire Globe for her symbol and her possession. But I lost the Fire Globe to Ennu’s treachery, before I learned I would have had the Globe as well as the throne of Dorn as a gift from the old King. He had no sons, Jaron, and he loved his people. He wanted to make sure the greatest danger of future war was removed by our union.”
Jaron snorted. “Tell the truth, sorceress! You murdered the King with some unknown magic, summoning that black destruction! You gave out that he had made you Queen at his death. You got away with it. Is that not nearer the truth?”
Nela’s eyes snapped sparks as Jaron’s voice went coldly on accusing her: “How could I believe your story when four of your men almost succeeded in killing me at the trysting place which only you and I knew about beforehand? Who else could have ordered your own men to set upon me there?”
Nela flared: “You fool! They were not to kill you, only to delay your return. I was not afraid that you could stop my plans, or Ennu’s dark sending. I was afraid his Black God would kill you if you were present, as it killed the King!”
“Tell me more about your friend Ennu, murderess.”
Jaron kept her eyes fixed with his own, while reasoning did somersaults, trying to decide the truth of her tale.
“I did not call you out of your dungeon to cross-examine me, Jaron of Korl. Either be civil or back you go, and rot there, for all of me! Enough is enough.”
“A fat lot of good your throne will do you with the Fire Globe in the hands of Ennu. What can you do against Ennu so long as he possesses it? What can you do against the Blue Men, who already follow the Black God? You admit that Ennu has some control or alliance with that evil force and has caused it to steal our Globe.”
The 47th Golden Age of Science Fiction Page 7