The Fantasy MEGAPACK ®

by Lester Del Rey

  She was helping him rise, then the others. “You were lost,” she said persuasively, hypnotically into his ear as she guided him out of the blind tunnel. “I searched and searched. Then I reported it to Morrien. I returned after these many days to make a final search.”

  “He believed you?”

  “Hard to say. No one was there to discount my story. I told him you abandoned me in the caverns, bound and blind-folded, once you decided you knew the way to Ultebre, but in your haste to return you took a wrong turning. Fortunately for me, a blindfold was an aid my father used to teach me the tunnels’ windings. The story seemed likely enough, considering that you wanted to abandon me all along, isn’t that right?”

  His head swam. He could rage inwardly and swear to himself that Morrien would know the truth, but he could say nothing aloud, for he was in her hands, faint with hunger and paralyzed with fear that he would never see the light again.

  “I’m not sure it matters what version of the story you tell him, for you will have to tell him that you have gone into the undefended heart of Ultebre. If he truly wants his revenge, then he, all of you, will have to stomach me as best you can.”

  Light and sound and the prosaic bustle of everyday life returned as they left the caverns, and Kyren began to doubt that she had done him a kindness in saving his life. They said that Kyren was like a man returned from the dead. They said also that after this time he was changed, that his nerve had been broken. In Kyren’s absence Morrien had named Riska his Second, almost as a joke (the men said Morrien’s bitch and laughed), but Kyren never disputed it. Though he hinted and said things by indirection, he never was able to tell Morrien to his face how he feared for him.

  With Riska’s guidance Morrien had several reconnaissance parties sent through to Ultebre. They found one entrance guarded but lackadaisically by a guard who seemed to consider his post a sinecure and spent most of his time napping or playing a game with painted strips of wood. The last patrol that returned brought a captive. “Our tunnel opened into the women’s quarters,” explained the leader. “We brought you a memento.” He pushed forward a shivering girl dressed in a gauzy skirt and some strategically placed jewelry. “She says her name is Gisela. She’s one of Amery’s latest concubines, no doubt.”

  “I’m a dancer,” said the girl sulkily. “The best in Ultebre.”

  “I warned them the trouble our band had when it started carrying off women,” said Riska, but in his inspection of Gisela, Morrien ignored her completely. Kyren would have recognized and feared the expression on her face had he been there to see it.

  “Dismissed,” he said to the soldiers, looking at Riska to include her. They were in Morrien’s chambers, and Riska, as Second, occupied a room adjacent to them.

  Gisela, once she had smoothed her rumpled skirt, seemed to make herself at home, obviously enjoying Morrien’s gaze on her.

  “Get rid of her,” said Riska with a sound of disgust.

  Morrien looked over at her, half-smiling as if amused by what he’d heard. Riska was always difficult to get along with but she’d never given him a direct order and he didn’t look as if he wanted her to start now.

  She met his look angrily, directly. “In this place you’ll bed me and no other.” Morrien looked at Gisela, her eyes bright and comprehending, and felt almost embarrassed at Riska’s bluntness.

  “I don’t want you,” he said, returning plain speech for bluntness, putting a wealth of disgust in that last word.

  “Do you want Amery’s life—and Jos’l’s? And all their tribe? Do you want to see their blood run at your feet, their faces bloated in death?” She was dark of eyes and olive of skin but she could blaze with a dark radiance.

  He made an abrupt gesture, sending Gisela scuttling from the room. Not that he was afraid of the outcome of this confrontation—not that at all—if Riska insisted on humiliating herself.…

  “Behind my back they call me she-wolf and sewer-rat. I don’t mind the names. In a way they’re true—but you need me. Above ground your pitiful army would be defeated. In the caverns, with me to lead, you can appear anywhere you choose. If you tried to explore for yourself it could take half a lifetime and in the meantime Amery and Jos’l despoil Ultebre at their leisure.”

  He advanced on her until they were nearly eye to eye. “You’d command me to your bed with revenge as the price. Are you so…desperate as all that?”

  “I’m only practical. I find you attractive and it seems unlikely that I’d have my way with you under normal circumstances, being thought savage in appearance—not that I’m not satisfied with how I look, you understand.”

  He felt his hold on his temper began to loosen. What kind of unnatural bitch was this—any other woman would have been dissolved in tears by now. Perhaps if she had, he might have been persuaded to give the comfort she sought, but not ordered, not under threats.

  She watched his hand twitch toward a knife on a belt he wasn’t wearing. “Killing me wouldn’t solve anything. I’m very much afraid there’s but one answer.” She reclined on a dais covered in furs. She seemed to enjoy the anger that came and went across his face, as he struggled for control. She had great faith in his self control.

  To continue their eye-to-eye confrontation, he had to bend down over the dais. “You might, in some ways I know, be persuaded to lead us about the caverns.” He put the balls of his thumbs gently on her eyelids. “One doesn’t need eyes underground, for example.” She drew away slightly, then regained her composure. “You would find me stubborn, I’m afraid, and afterward a very confused guide. I might even leave you to wander the tunnels till you died.”

  Silence for some moments.

  He threw himself down onto the dais beside her. “What are you trying to do? Do you want to bring me to my knees, carry me off, rape me? He lay on the dais, hands beneath his head, half-joking, half in a kind of confusion. “Here I am, helpless, in your hands. Go ahead. I’ll be very interested to see how you accomplish it.”

  She could not suppress a laugh. She put her hand gently on his chest. “I don’t say I wouldn’t like to, if it were possible, but I believe we’d find it awkward. No, I’ll abide by tradition in this.”

  He made a sudden movement, more menacing than anything else. “Very friendly, very gently,” she cautioned. “Treat me as you intended to treat her. You can even pretend I’m Gisela, I don’t mind.” He tried, closing his eyes as he kissed her when all his instincts were screaming for blood. He fantasized snapping her scrawny neck, doing other unprintable things. When the kiss was ended, she drew back, a mocking smile on her lips. “You’re a disappointing lover. I release you. You’re free to go to your little Gisela.” He blinked.

  Had she changed her mind, finding this whole process too degrading, or was she playing the kinds of power games he found so amusing when she played them against other people. For some moments he was blind, deaf, dumb with anger; but as usual, she had calculated the limits of his control. She always calculated everything to a hair’s tolerance, but it was possible that this time she had overextended herself a bit.

  “You may go,” she was saying and attempting to roll sideways off the dais. He gave a sudden, blood-curdling war cry, following it immediately with another even shriller. Anyone who heard it would think that he had gone (or been sent) over the edge. She shrank back into herself a little, but recovered well.

  “I’m mad with love, Gisela,” he said, scrabbling after her over the mounded furs. “My lovely, my golden one.”

  “Morrien, wake up.” She caught him on the side of the head with an open handed blow that made his ears ring, perhaps as a gesture to bring him to his senses. They tumbled from the dais as he grappled with her. For her lesser size, she really wasn’t bad as a fighter, he noted; it was all be could do to restrain her and undo the strings of her tabard. He kept a glassy look in his eyes and kept on mum
bling mindless things about Gisela. She could only blame herself that she had pushed him too far and driven him to this (or so he hoped). He twined his fingers in her hair in the pretext of caressing it and brought her head down smartly against the stone floor, not enough for damage, just enough to stop this infernal wrestling match. He hoped she hadn’t presence of mind left to realize how premeditated that act seemed. Her eyes went a little blank and he could do anything he wanted, so for awhile he did, though it wasn’t as enjoyable as he’d hoped. Then he gave her what she had professed to want, but not friendly, not gentle as she had ordered. All with the excuse of his feigned madness, though possibly by that time he had achieved a kind of madness of his own, and perhaps he would never be sure at this point just who had been raped.

  * * * *

  Riska limped a little as she led the way into the tunnel and when she moved, she moved carefully. “I had some terrible dreams last night,” he said, glad that the darkness masked his expression; he could not have taunted her so in the light.

  “Your dreams are not my concern,” she said coldly. “I slept…well. What is it you remember of your dream?”

  “I dreamed of an enemy. Someone I wanted to kill.”

  “Sorry.” He enjoyed the way she recoiled when he accidentally bumped against her, but, as he was beginning to realize with more and more clarity, he must not carry these games too far. She was not stupid and with the least flicker of suspicion, she would leave him here to wander about until he died. She’d probably enjoy the idea of it.

  Morrien crouched at the opening into the palace. His nerves were pulled tight by the waiting. His troops were in position at the hundred egresses of Ultebre. Down the tunnelways the word was passed. “Down the tyrant, Amery.” Ultebre, the queen city, was almost in their hands. Morrien burst out amidst general confusion; Riska had insisted she be at his side, as Second. He didn’t object; perhaps some enthusiastic Ultebren would settle his dilemma by killing her. Though he supposed he would regret her death. Here, even in the palace itself, defense was poorly organized. He supposed their strength had been concentrated along the walls with their turrets and wonderful war machines, unfortunately now facing the wrong way for a proper defense.

  His sword was drawn, but he saw little combat, his troops going before him, so easily it seemed, putting to rout the confused palace guard. He kept hearing the plaintive question, “Where are they all coming from?” Like insects from the walls and rats from the sewers, he thought. An inner chamber was fiercely guarded and Morrien joined in the close fighting, thinking that perhaps Amery was here. The defense cut down or scattered, they battered down the door. Amery’s body lay sprawled across some cushions. His guard had given him the time to be quite dead, but hardly peaceful looking, the skin cyanotic, flecks of foam drying around the mouth.

  “He was wise,” observed Morrien.

  “Cut off the head,” said Riska. “Have it displayed on a pike at the city’s gate. The body you can throw into the sewers for the rats to squabble over.” Soldiers rushed to carry this out, as a messenger entered to tell them that Jos’l had escaped, gotten out of the city in the confusion of its fall. “Then don’t waste time standing here puling. Get the word out—one hundred gold pieces for the return of Jos’l…alive.”

  Kyren and Morrien exchanged looks as she left. “Now that we are in control, the savage is of no further use. She is a positive danger. And you know it well.”

  Morrien gave a gesture of dismissal, but Kyren caught his eye and a look of understanding passed between them.

  After many days had passed Riska confronted the guards at the door of the fine new house that Morrien had provided for her. They crossed their pikes as she approached. “Your ladyship is not to go out alone,” said one of them. “The streets still hold some danger. The conquest of the city still goes on in isolated areas.”

  She laughed rudely. Though the sound of it made him shuffle in embarrassment, it didn’t change the position of the pikes.

  “Say I do not go out…by Morrien’s order.”

  She wheeled about and walked disconsolately through the richly furnished rooms. At first this seemed a part of what she had won. There had been parties; Morrien had even been here once though he had looked rather grim. The baths, the servants, the fine clothes, these had distracted her somewhat. But it hadn’t taken her that long to realize that no matter how fine the quarters, when you couldn’t leave them, you were in prison. And Morrien’s grim face might mean more than responsibility for reorganizing the government of Ultebre.

  The assassin was dressed in dark clothing so he was halfway across her bed chamber before she detected him. Her only warning was the light rippling down the knife blade. His hand arched back, down, struck the mounded fabric on the dais. It was not really luck that she had decided to sleep on the floor. He was just discovering that he had murdered the bedclothes when she hit him from behind with a brass lamp. She turned him over with a foot, but didn’t recognize him, though she had had a fleeting hope when she had struck him that it would be Kyren, and an unexpressed fear that it was Morrien. She shouted and threw the lamp against the wall with a metallic crash. When the guard entered, he tripped over the sprawled body of the assassin and called out for his companion as she had hoped. As they crouched over the assassin, she slipped from the room and made for the unguarded door, no longer a fine lady, nor a prisoner, but free and everything they thought her—perhaps even worse.

  Morrien entered his sleeping chamber wearily, releasing his cloak from his shoulders to let it fall on the floor. A servant rushed to attend him, but Morrien spoke curtly, sending him away.

  A dagger struck the inlaid wood of the floor and vibrated rattlingly between Morrien and Riska, who stepped from the shadows. “I came to return this,” she said and lifted her lip off white teeth in a smile.

  He still had a knife at his belt, if he wished to draw it, but he seemed oblivious of the weapon. “It seemed the only solution. I only wanted you in a safe place, out of the way, but Kyren—”

  “You knew he hated me. You knew what he would do.”

  “I don’t know. I suppose so. I had even thought of making you my lady, to rule with me.” There was a silence as their eyes met, then Riska broke it with a laugh that Morrien joined in.

  “I see. The allies one makes in war can become an embarrassment in time of peace. Times change and people do not.” She turned to go.

  “I will have to set men to exploring the caverns. I can’t be as blissfully ignorant of history as Amery was.”

  “Their windings are many and deep, and I know secrets by which the very walls may be changed. It will be long before you may say you have found them all out. And a human life is short.”

  “All things considered, yours may be shorter than most.”

  “Perhaps…if you don’t guard the ways too strongly, you may waken to someone who will lie down with you—like someone who comes in a dream. In the morning, some trinket or some treasure may be missing. I hear there are thieves in Ultebre.”

  ALLIANCES, by Janet Fox

  The tunnel Riska had come through had been dark, heavy with the scent of damp and decay that clung to all these ancient passageways. The room she had just entered was spacious and immaculate, richly arrayed. Lamplight picked pinpoints of gold from intricately woven wall hangings, lingered lovingly on the highlights in hand-rubbed wood. Standing between these two worlds: one of darkness, the other of light, Riska felt a passing sense of unreality. The times she’d spent in this rich chamber were dreamlike at best; one could almost say they’d never happened at all. She emerged fully into the room, letting fall the thick draperies that hid the irregular opening through which she’d come. Once, there had been many openings into the Palace of Ultebre’s king, but they had been sealed off. This was the only one left.

  Though no one was here, she made herself at home as out
of old habit, helping herself to a cup of firebrew from one of several clay vessels in a carven cabinet and settling down in a chair built for someone a good deal larger than herself but made more comfortable with cushions from the bed. She sat this way for a time, lolling back on the cushions as if fully relaxed. Yet there was always an underlying tenseness to her thin body, a hint of watchfulness in the deepset dark eyes.

  The opening of the chamber’s proper door galvanized some of this tenseness and she sat forward as a man entered, only to lie back again, as she recognized Morrien. His tall, well-muscled body was clad in a short house-robe of linen but the effect was the same as if he wore full battle-armor. Something about him was just naturally imposing, and she didn’t think that becoming King had really affected that one way or the other. He carried in his arms a child, plump and vigorous, its bare skin giving off the glow of health.

  Riska’s dark eyes fastened almost hungrily on the child a moment. She felt the weight of full reality returning. If she thought everything that had transpired in this chamber a dream, this child was proof enough that all had been real. Pink starfish hands groped at Morrien’s face, tangled in his hair, but he only patiently dislodged the baby’s grip and swung her down to the low, fur-covered platform that was his bed and let her crawl as she pleased. “I didn’t expect to find your bed so crowded,” said Riska; trying for light banter, and yet finding herself ending with a tone of bitterness. “Do you always share your bedchamber with your bastard children?”

  “I supposed you’d be glad to see how well she’s growing. Foolish of me, I know, to give you the feelings one would expect of any woman. I see now that that was only in my imagination that I gave you such feelings as a gift.” The child on the bed had found her way under the bedclothes and had burrowed under them peeking out and ducking back again with hearty giggling sounds.